McNab lost countenance.
"Eh, would he?" he snarled.
The fear of death and revenge, the dealing out to himself of what he had dealt so often to others, was the continual dogging terror that haunted him. Then he smiled again and chuckled.
"If I let him, eh, my pretty," he said, gazing up at her. "If I let him. I wouldn't advise you to ... to tell him ... create bad feelin' between us ... it'd be a pity ... seeing ... me and y'r father's pretty good friends, and they say it's better to make a friend than an enemy of McNab. Besides it was only my little bit of fun, Deirdre. Haven't I known you since you were—so high."
Deirdre turned the chestnut to the road.
"Good-bye, me dear," McNab called. "And my respects to the Schoolmaster, don't forget! Tell him I think it was mean to do me the trick of clearin' out without lettin' me know though, 'n me wantin' to stand by him in any little bit of trouble that's comin' to him. But I'll be comin' up to see him, soon—sooner than he thinks—p'raps."
There was a warning, a veiled threat, in the words.
As the chestnut flew out along the green roadsides, that mean voice with its geniality and thin-edged malice, reverberated in Deirdre's ears. She looked back when she was some distance out on the flat road that wound over the plains to the hills, and saw McNab hobbling back towards the whitewashed irregular and dilapidated huts of the Wirree township. Her eyes went out to the ranges with an eager sigh. She quickened the chestnut's pace again with a rub of her heels on his sleek side.