The Bushranger's Secret

by Mrs. Henry Clarke

Mrs. Morton was called into the house at that moment, and her husband strolled into the garden to await his summons to the mid-day meal. He had not been there many moments when his quick ear caught the sound of rapid hoof-beats on the road below the house. A gate from the garden led into the road, and Mr. Morton hurried towards it. Gray had intended to ride up to the other side of the house, but when he saw Mr. Morton at the gate he checked his horse and flung himself off. There was no need for him to speak for Mr. Morton to know he brought bad news. His whole frame was trembling as he stood steadying himself by his horse; his lips were white as death.

"Something has happened to Harding, is that it?" exclaimed Mr. Morton when Gray had twice tried to make his voice audible and failed.

"I fear so," Gray gasped out. "He has not come back. He started yesterday morning for Big Creek, and he has not come back."

Gray had determined beforehand what to say, but he had not known it would be so difficult. His eyes fell before Mr. Morton's glance, as if that glance could read his soul. But Mr. Morton had never felt so warmly towards Gray as he did at that moment. He was a better fellow than he had thought him, he said to himself, to feel Harding's disappearance so keenly.

"Look here, my lad," he said kindly, "you go into the house and ask Mrs. Morton to give you something to eat. You're just tired out, you know, and won't be fit for anything till you've had a rest. Oh, you shall go with us," he added as he saw Gray's hesitating look. "But we can't start for another hour. I must send over to Billoora for a man or two. Don't be so downhearted about it, Gray. We shall find him, never fear."

But Mr. Morton's cheerful prophecy was not destined to be verified. The search for Harding was long and thorough—and fruitless. His horse was found lying dead, with an ugly wound in its neck from the horn of a bull; but Harding and his dog were gone.

Gray grew very worn and haggard in those weeks of waiting. His youth went from him. They attributed his changed looks at the station to his grief for Harding. It was enough to unhinge any man, they said—that mysterious loss of his mate. And in this explanation they were partly right. At first, Gray's remorse was almost more than he could bear. He was one of the most eager in the search-party. He rode day after day across those barren wastes of back-country, and spared no effort to find some sign of the missing man. But when the search was at last given up as hopeless, when those on the station began to take Harding's death for granted, and life began to flow on in the ordinary channel, then Gray's mind went back to the map he had destroyed, and the treasure hidden in Deadman's Gully.

He was thinking of it one afternoon as he was riding across to Billoora on an errand for Mr. Morton. It was a clear beautiful afternoon, and the air on the grassy uplands was fresh and bracing. Gray might have taken the river road, which was a mile or two nearer, but it would have led him past the cottages, and he could not bear to look at them—the remembrance that Harding was to have had one of them was too exquisitely painful. But on the uplands there was nothing to remind him of Harding—the richly-green rolling wooded pastures were altogether unlike the gray plains round the hut.

Gray gazed about him and thought of England. If he got that money he would go back there; his mind was fully made up on that point. And though he had not yet said so in so many words to himself, he knew he intended to get the money. Only the day before he had refused a new post offered to him by Mr. Morton, and said that he wished to leave the station in a week or two. And this afternoon, for the first time since Harding's disappearance, he allowed himself to dwell on the great and wonderful change the finding of the treasure would make in his life.

Absorbed in these thoughts he did not notice the approach of a man along the grassy track. The man was walking slowly and painfully, carrying a bundle over his shoulder. He was a small, wiry, narrow-shouldered man, with a thin peaked face, from which a pair of small eyes looked keenly out from under thick reddish eyebrows. He had caught sight of Gray long before Gray saw him, and after walking some distance towards him, he sat down on the bank and waited for him to come up. Gray checked his horse to speak.