“Old man,” said Turner, he had been telling to unlistening ears the tale of how the blacks had speared, in wanton mischief, a mob of two hundred cattle on Jinfalla, not fifteen miles from the home station, “old man, you see it would be just ruination to let this go on. Either they or we must clear out. We can’t both live here, that’s certain.”
“Always the same old yarn wherever the Englishman goes, always the same old yarn. Poor niggers!”
“Well, what’d you have?” said the other warmly; “something’s got to be done.”
“What?” Turner stopped his horse and looked his companion full in the face. “Cut it all?”
There was silence for a moment. Then Turner said again:
Then he added, as if as an afterthought, “If she ‘ll have me.”
“No fear of that,” said Turner with a sigh. Then he turned to his old chum, and stretching over laid a kindly hand on his arm, “I congratulate you, old chap.”
“Thank you.” And they rode on in silence, the one man thinking bitterly that if ever he had cherished a spark of hope of winning the woman he had loved he must give it up at last, the other trying to realise the good fortune that had come to him.
And an hour ago he had been as this man beside him--only one little hour ago!
“How far do you reckon it to the head-station? Fifty miles?”
“Then I guess I ‘ll put up at your place. How far’s that?”
“All right. Lead on, master of Heyington.”
To refuse a man hospitality in the bush--such a thing was never heard of, and, though Stanesby said no welcoming word, it never occurred to Turner to doubt that he was more than welcome.
“Good Lord! What’s ten miles, and we haven’t met for years. I must say, old chap, you don’t seem particularly pleased to see an old chum.”
“I--they ain’t so plentiful I can afford to do that. No, I was thinking of going in to the station with you.”
“Right you are, old man, do you? Only we’ll put up at your place for the night--my horse’s pretty well done--and go on in the morning.”
Stanesby said nothing, only turned his horse’s head slightly to the left. Save the red bluffs away to the east there was nothing to mark the change of direction. There was no reason apparently for his choosing one direction rather than another.
They rode in silence, these two who had been college chums and had not met for years. Possibly it was the one man’s good fortune that raised a barrier between them. It was not easy for Turner to talk of present difficulties and troubles when, as Stanesby said, he was going to “cut it all”; it was not easy for him to speak of bygone times when the other man was going back to them, and he would be left here without a prospect of a change. And Stanesby said nothing, he could only think of the great difference between them; and yesterday there was nothing he would have liked better than this meeting with his old friend, which to-day fell flat. No, he had nothing to say. Already their paths lay wide apart.