‘You’ve heard how Jakes pegged out?’ asked Jim abruptly.
‘Yes,’ I answered, ‘Sergeant O’Brien shot him in the Long Swamp.’
‘So most people think,’ was his reply. ‘But I know who was first in at the end; and when, crouching up to his neck in the mud and long reeds, with my fingers grasping his throat, I think, as he turned his bloodshot and protruding eyes on mine, I think, I say, that he knew me again, all changed as I was. He never spoke, though, and I let him die slowly, for I was sure that the sergeant was a long way behind. I held him there, I tell you, and watched him as he tried to blow the bubbles of blood and froth from out his pale lips, and at last I told him who I was, and how I had tracked him [131] ]down, and was now about to send his vile soul to perdition. Then, as I heard the galloping tramp of the trooper’s horse, I smothered him in the stagnant ooze of that foul swamp. Truly a dog’s death, but one too good for him! O’Brien, coming up soon afterward, found the body, put a couple of pistol bullets into it, and received the Government reward and promotion, whilst I set off in search of the others.
‘One I came across four years afterwards on the Adelaide side. I had taken a job of shepherding up Port Augusta way, when, one night, who should come to the hut but Number Two, the one who laughed the longest and loudest of the three, as I lay in agony on the sojurs’ nest. I knew him in a minute and heartily welcomed him to stop that night. “Just put those sheep in the yard, matey,” I says, “while I make some bread for our supper.”
‘Well, I makes two smallish johnnycakes, and we had our tea. Then we starts smoking and yarning, and at length I turned the talk on to ants, saying I couldn’t keep nothing there because of them. With that he falls to laughing, and, says he, “My word, mate, I could tell you a yarn if I liked ’bout ants—sojurs—that’d make you laugh for a week, only you see it ain’t always safe, even in the bush, to talk among strangers.”
‘All of a sudden he turned as white as a sheet, and drops off the stool, and twists and groans. Then he sings out, “I’m going to die.”
‘You see,’ remarked Jim, with the cold impassiveness which had, almost throughout, characterised his manner, [132] ]‘the strychnine in the johnnycake that had fallen to his share was beginning to work him, and as I laughingly reminded him of old times, and asked him to go on with his story about the sojur ants, he also knew me, and shrieked and prayed for the mercy that I had once so unavailingly implored at his hands. He was very soon, however, too far gone to say much. A few more struggles and it was all over, and then I dragged the dead carrion out of my hut and buried it eight feet deep under the sheep-dung in the yard, where, likely enough, it is yet. So much for Number Two!’ exclaimed Jim, as I sat looking rather doubtfully at him. Not that I questioned the truthfulness of his story—that was stamped on every word he uttered—but that I began to think him rather a dangerous kind of monomaniac to have in a drover’s camp. ‘And now, sir,’ he went on presently, ‘you’ve had the story you asked me for, and if ever we meet again after this trip, maybe I’ll have something to tell you about Number Three; that business it is that brought me down about these parts, for I heard he was working at some of the stations on the river. And as God made me!’ he exclaimed, with a subdued sort of gloomy ferocity in his voice, ‘when we do meet, he shall feel the vengeance of the man whose life and love and fortune he helped to ruin so utterly. I could pick him out of a thousand, with his great nose all of a skew, and his one leg shorter than the other.’
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The watch-fires were glimmering dimly. The cool air [133] ]which heralds the Australian dawn was blowing, and the sheep were moving silently out of their camp in long strings as I rose to my feet. In the white tents all was silence. Thanks to Sojur Jim, their occupants had passed an undisturbed night. Absorbed in his gruesome story—that dark tale of torture and retribution, with just that one little trait of woman’s constancy and devotion shining out like some bright star from a murky sky—the time had slipped away unheeded. Sending him to call the cook, I put the sheep together, wondering mightily to myself, as the man, with his bent-down head and slouching gait, moved away, whether he really could be the same creature who through the silent watches of the night had unfolded to my view such a concentrated, tireless, and as yet unsatiated thirst for revenge, such a fixed and relentless purpose of retaliation, unweakened through the years, but burning freshly and fiercely to-day, as, when with the scarcely healed scars still smarting, disfigured, ruined, hopeless, forsaking all, he went forth alone into the world to hunt down his persecutors.
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