The Rider of Waroona

by G. Firth Scott

From that arose a quarrel with the bank, for the sudden dismissal led to an important transaction failing for the want of a simple act. The bank officials, knowing the man with whom they were dealing waited for the instructions which never came. Had they acted without them he would probably have repudiated their action, but as they did not act, he blamed them for his loss, accused them of dishonesty and removed his account, vowing never to have dealings with them again if he could avoid it, and always putting them to the greatest inconvenience when he was compelled to deal with or through them.

Now, by an irony of fate, he was forced to have dealings with them again, dealings which he resented for more reasons than his antagonism to the institution, and dealings, moreover, which he was prepared to leave no stone unturned to bring to naught.

He had placed Waroona Downs in the hands of Gale, the local auctioneer, for sale. The one condition he had imposed was that the purchaser should be a resident of the district, a condition he had considered ample to prevent the property passing into the possession of one of the opposite—and hated—sex. Yet that condition had failed. A purchaser had been found, a purchaser for whom the bank was acting, and a purchaser who, while being a resident in the district, was also a woman.

Dudgeon—"Crotchety Dudgeon" as he was termed by his neighbours, who, despite his wealth, usually regarded him as being of no account in the general scheme of Nature—had done his best to repudiate the bargain; had blustered and fumed, threatening actions and penalties against all and sundry, but in vain. The bank officials were polite, listening to all he had to say in silence and only speaking in cold, precise, formal phrases to reiterate the intention of the purchaser to hold to her bargain, and the readiness of the bank to complete, on her behalf, the transaction.

He refused to meet or see her, but he could not help hearing of her, and what he heard only served to stimulate his resentment, for her name, Nora Burke, recalled memories of his Irish rival O'Guire, while the bitterness of his surrender to the charms of Kitty Lambton was revived when he understood that Mrs. Burke also belonged to the fascinating type of woman.

She had, he learned, the coal-black hair of the Western Irish, and grey-blue eyes which flickered and flashed behind thick dark lashes. What her other features were he did not hear, for her wealth of hair and the charm of her eyes carried all before them. But, as a matter of fact, no other feature was conspicuously beautiful, and it was difficult to realise where the charm of her face rested until the full force of the dark-lashed eyes was recognised. Within them lay the secret of the power she wielded.

Although not above the average height, a graceful and well-proportioned figure gave the impression of a greater stature. One of the most accomplished horsewomen who ever sat a side-saddle, her appearance on horseback would alone have sufficed, in a community like Waroona, to have won for her the admiration and homage of the public. But there were yet other reasons for the popularity she acquired within an hour of her arrival.

Forty miles from a railway, the township was the centre of a district divided into a series of sheep stations. When the season came for shearing the wool and despatching it to the markets in the cities on the coast hundreds of miles away, the population was fairly respectable in point of numbers, though with the riff-raff which formed the army of camp followers moving in the track of the shearers and teamsters, respectability was not otherwise manifest. But at other periods of the year, there were few men and fewer women scattered over the area marked on the map as Waroona, and including as many square miles as some English counties possess acres. Wherefore the arrival of any new-comer was an event; but when that new-comer was a woman, and one, moreover, of the many personal charms and accomplishments of Mrs. Burke, it was inevitable that her advent should form the subject of something more than passing interest.

Her frank manner of speech also helped her, for there is nothing more objectionable to the average Colonial than the person who is reserved on the subject of his or her private and personal concerns.

There was no such reserve with Mrs. Burke. She had not been twenty-four hours in Waroona before it was known that she was a young widow left with a stepson to bring up and educate on the rents from an impoverished Irish estate. Year by year it became more and more difficult, she said, to collect those rents from tenants to whom politics were more attractive than commercial obligations. Therefore, when a chance occurred for her to sell the estate, she did not hesitate to entertain it. But, in order that her stepson might still derive as much benefit as possible from the wreck of his ancestors' wealth, she determined, before selling, to seek in Australia a new heritage for the last of the Burkes.