Colonial Born: A Tale of the Queensland bush

by G. Firth Scott

Then they sat, wherever there was shade, and waited, uneasy lest the quick-tongued Ailleen should again swoop down upon them with anger which they knew was just, and yet unable to do otherwise than wait, if only to see whether Slaughter would come, and what he would do when he did come.

A cloud of dust rapidly advancing along the road was the first intimation of his approach, and as it came nearer they caught the sound of the galloping horse. He rode right up to the school-house gate and jumped out of the saddle. Marmot and his companions gathered round the gate as though to intercept him, till they saw his face. Then they fell back, and made way for him as he strode up the path towards the cottage, following him with their eyes, silent before the fascination of the terrible expression on his face. They were men whose minds worked slowly and in stolid grooves; men who pondered heavily over the prosaic occurrences which made up the monotonous routine of their lives; men who had no grasp of more subtle phenomena than those which formed the ordinary sequence of events in the restricted limits of their commonplace experiences. How, then, could they grasp in a moment, let alone comprehend, the sudden transformation of Slaughter from a soured and indifferent man to one of keen, quick, resolute character, whose tightly closed lips and lowering brow only emphasized the flash and glitter of his eyes?

They watched him as he passed up the pathway, with a stride and a swing so different from his ordinary listless dawdle. They heard the sound of his heavy tread on the boards of the cottage verandah. Then there was a silence, and the heavy wits of each of the waiting men strove to grasp sufficient of the spectacle to put his thoughts into words and ask for his comrades' help to understand. But before that could be done Slaughter again appeared coming down the pathway. He walked towards them, the frown gone from his face, and his eyes wide open and staring. A yard from them he stopped.

"He's dead," he exclaimed, in a hard, strained voice. "Dead—and I was too late."

The first words roused their interest, the last touched such sensibilities as they had. The figure of the man before them, strangely altered and moved, with the scornful bitterness they had learned to regard as his characteristic gone from his face, struck into their dull minds as something akin to a rebuke for their indifference to Ailleen's repeated requests for them to carry out a dying man's wish. The man was dead now, and Slaughter's words "too late" made them wince.

"It's a bad business," some one mumbled. "It's a bad business—for Yaller-head," he added, by way of diverting the suspicion of personal shortcomings.

"We'll see her through," Marmot said. "We'll——"

He stopped abruptly as he met Slaughter's glance; and the others looked from one to the other—from Marmot, disconcerted and uneasy, to Slaughter, whose face was set and hard in an expression that conveyed even to the men of Birralong the fact that they were in the presence of something which over-ruled them and subjugated them into a state of mental inferiority. The verbose Marmot, wordless; the listless Slaughter, dominant. It was a psychological crisis that humbled and abashed them.

They could only stand silent and expectant for the new development. The return of Slaughter to the cottage, this time with slow steps and bowed head, did not appeal to them as a development, and with that obtuse folly which is the birthright of the stolid, they straggled up the path after him. They were able to see into the room without going on to the verandah, and as each one glanced into it, he saw enough to rebuke him and make him turn back and walk sedately and quietly to the roadway.

When Slaughter reached the cottage the second time and looked into the room, Ailleen was on her knees crouched down beside the low bed on which lay the still form of her dead father. She held in both her hands one of his, and her head was resting on them, the wealth of golden hair, broken loose from its restraint, welling round and over them. Slaughter, as he came to the doorway, took the old felt hat from his head, and tried to walk on tip-toe lest his heavy boots should make too much noise.