Boyd Cable - By Blow and Kiss

Steve laughed. “Look down,” he said; “don’t you see the sheep tracks?”

“I don’t,” she confessed; “it’s too dark to see anything but a blur of sand.”

“Look up, then,” he answered; “the stars aren’t blurred anyway, and they point the way. I wish they weren’t so confoundedly bright. A bank of thick black cloud would mean a lot to me just now.”

“You’re thinking of rain?” said Ess.

“Does one think of anything else these days?” he said. “And now, to-night, rain would mean more to me than ever it did.”

“Why more than yesterday?” she asked.

“Wait till we’re driving back and I can talk in comfort, and I’ll tell you,” he said, and thereafter they rode in silence, the shuffling hoof-beats in the sand and the creak of saddlery the only sounds that broke the stillness.

“There’s the clump of trees we were camped at,” he said presently. “And there’s the buggy. We’ll find the horses near – hark! There they are,” as the buggy horses neighed loudly.

“Now we’ll have a cup of tea,” he said. “I haven’t got to-day’s dust out of my throat yet, and I don’t suppose you have.”

He leaped from his horse and helped the girl down, and fastened the reins to the buggy wheel. In three minutes he had collected a handful of sticks, started a fire, and stood the billy beside it, tilted the water into it from a waterbag, and left it to boil while he went off after the buggy horses. It was boiling when he came back, and he dropped a handful of tea in it and lifted it off the fire.

“Cups,” he said, and produced them from his pocket. “Sugar,” he tipped a screw of paper from a cup. “Milk – you must imagine … and there you are,” dipping a cupful of tea out and putting it beside her. “Spoon – ” he picked up a twig and handed it to her. “Everything kept on the premises you see.”

In ten minutes they had finished their tea, the buggy horses harnessed in, and Ess’s horse fastened to the buggy with a leading rope. “We must train him to follow as mine will always do,” said Steve; “I simply fasten my rein back to my stirrup, and there you are.”

“Now,” said Steve, when they had started and were bowling along at a rapid trot, “I was going to tell you why I’m more anxious than ever for rain.”

“I warn you I’ll expect something thrilling after these preliminaries,” she said.

“Thrilling enough if you’re anything of a gambler,” said Steve. “You know, and have seen something, of the struggle going on to battle the sheep through. Well, I’m sitting into the game and taking a hand to play out against the weather and the country. I had a long talk with the old boss to-day, and I’ve made a deal with him for some of his sheep. I’ve bought some thousands of them – I don’t know just how many exactly.”

“Bought sheep?” said Ess, in some astonishment. “But surely this is a bad time to buy sheep – when you see them dying under your eyes.”

“Bad time for an investment,” said Steve, “but a good time for a gamble. The odds are long, but the stake is more worth the winning. I’ve bought on peculiar terms. I’ve had a few hundred pounds put away – I made it once on a turn of the hand, and always saved it for a fling at something worth while – and I’ve paid that for a proportion of the total number of sheep the boss has left at the next lambing season. If half his sheep pull through I’ll double or treble my money. If they all or nearly all die, I lose the lot. By the way they’re travelling to-day, and the looks of them, it’s a toss-up whether they reach the hills; so I may be broke, and the game finished by to-morrow night. If they are not into the hills by then it’s hopeless for them. If they are, I win the first hand, and they may manage to hold on till the rain comes, or at least enough of them to bring me back my money.”

“It is thrilling,” said Ess, “and thank you for telling me. It makes the whole thing doubly interesting for me – and I wish you luck.”

“Thanks,” he said; “I don’t want you to mention this to anyone. I’ve told your uncle, but I’d rather not tell the others.”

“Very well,” she promised, “I’ll say nothing. But, do you know,” looking at him quizzically, “I’m rather surprised to hear that a man like you has managed to save some hundreds. It was agreed that we could be frank to each other, so you see I’m taking full advantage of it: Honestly, I thought you were such a reckless profligate spendthrift that I imagined you frightfully hard up.”

“You’re quite right, and I usually am,” he admitted. “But I always had this little lot banked away for just such a chance as this. It was an awkward amount you see – too big to splash on a spree, and not enough to do anything big with. It just fits in here.”

“But why take such a heavy risk with it?” she asked. “Surely there were safer things to do with it?”

“Have you ever gone to a horse race?” he asked.

“Yes, but I don’t see – ”

“Then you’ve had a bet on a race – a shilling, or a box of chocolates, or a pair of gloves, perhaps?”

“Yes,” she admitted again.

“Then you know how much more interesting the race is when you have a bet on. Same thing with cards, a game’s mighty poor fun unless you play for coins or counters. Well, the sheep here are the coins and counters in the game we’re playing out, and I want to have my stake on the table along with the rest. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she said, “I understand, although I don’t need anything of my own in this to give me an interest. I’m hugely, tensely interested as it is, and I want to see the sheep pull through, and the boss and all of you win, as if every sheep were my own.”

“That’s because you have the personal interest,” he said. “Because your uncle and every soul you know here is doing nothing else, and thinking of nothing else, but whether we’re going to win, and how we’re going to win.”

“Yes, that’s true,” she said, “and I confess I am keener than ever since I’ve met the boss, and will be more so since I’ve heard of the personal interest you have in it.”

“Thank you,” he said laughingly, “that’s a very pretty compliment. I see you know how to pay them even if you jump on a man for paying them to you.”

“You’re too greedy for them,” she laughed, “or you’d know that the interest would be added the same if it were Whip or Blazes, or any of the others had bought the sheep.”

“Now I suppose that serves me right,” he said, with a sigh of mock resignation. “I should have been content to take the compliment, and gloat over it in secret.”

“Isn’t it a beautiful night?” she said serenely. “Excuse the transparent method of changing the personal conversation.”

“I’ve noticed,” he said, “that when a woman runs away from a subject, it’s usually because she’s afraid of it.”

“And you might have noticed,” she countered, “that when she does start to run away she can’t be persuaded or lured into facing it again – till she’s ready. It’s a beautiful night.”

“Yes,” he said a trifle bitterly, “but a beautiful night out here is mostly like a beautiful woman, sweet and caressing maybe, so long as she wins her game, but hard enough and bitter enough back of it.”

“I certainly can’t twist a compliment out of that,” she said drily; “I’d be interested to know whether you think me ugly, or merely bitter and hard.”

“You’re pretty enough,” he said bluntly, “but I’ve no doubt you could and would be hard enough if the occasion arose.”

“This is being frank with a vengeance,” she said ruefully. “But I suppose I brought it on myself. I can only hope, then, the occasion will not come.”