Next morning we three started south. We stayed a couple of days at Ned Baker"s station on the border, and then started on our three-hundred-mile ride down-country. The weather was still very hot, so we decided to travel at night for a while, and left Ned"s place at dusk.

He parted from us at the homestead gate. He gave Andy a small packet, done up in canvas, for Mrs Baker, which Andy told me contained Bob"s pocket-book, letters, and papers. We looked back, after we"d gone a piece along the dusty road, and saw Ned still standing by the gate; and a very lonely figure he looked. Ned was a bachelor. "Poor old Ned," said Andy to me. "He was in love with Mrs Bob Baker before she got married, but she picked the wrong man--girls mostly do. Ned and Bob were together on the Macquarie, but Ned left when his brother married, and he"s been up in these G.o.d-forsaken scrubs ever since. Look, I want to tell you something, Jack: Ned has written to Mrs Bob to tell her that Bob died of fever, and everything was done for him that could be done, and that he died easy--and all that sort of thing. Ned sent her some money, and she is to think that it was the money due to Bob when he died. Now I"ll have to go and see her when we get to Solong; there"s no getting out of it, I"ll have to face her--and you"ll have to come with me."

"d.a.m.ned if I will!" I said.

"But you"ll have to," said Andy. "You"ll have to stick to me; you"re surely not crawler enough to desert a mate in a case like this? I"ll have to lie like h.e.l.l--I"ll have to lie as I never lied to a woman before; and you"ll have to back me and corroborate every lie."

I"d never seen Andy show so much emotion.

"There"s plenty of time to fix up a good yarn," said Andy. He said no more about Mrs Baker, and we only mentioned the Boss"s name casually, until we were within about a day"s ride of Solong; then Andy told me the yarn he"d made up about the Boss"s death.

"And I want you to listen, Jack," he said, "and remember every word--and if you can fix up a better yarn you can tell me afterwards. Now it was like this: the Boss wasn"t too well when he crossed the border. He complained of pains in his back and head and a stinging pain in the back of his neck, and he had dysentery bad,--but that doesn"t matter; it"s lucky I ain"t supposed to tell a woman all the symptoms. The Boss stuck to the job as long as he could, but we managed the cattle and made it as easy as we could for him. He"d just take it easy, and ride on from camp to camp, and rest. One night I rode to a town off the route (or you did, if you like) and got some medicine for him; that made him better for a while, but at last, a day or two this side of Mulgatown, he had to give up. A squatter there drove him into town in his buggy and put him up at the best hotel. The publican knew the Boss and did all he could for him--put him in the best room and wired for another doctor. We wired for Ned as soon as we saw how bad the Boss was, and Ned rode night and day and got there three days before the Boss died. The Boss was a bit off his head some of the time with the fever, but was calm and quiet towards the end and died easy. He talked a lot about his wife and children, and told us to tell the wife not to fret but to cheer up for the children"s sake. How does that sound?"

I"d been thinking while I listened, and an idea struck me.

"Why not let her know the truth?" I asked. "She"s sure to hear of it sooner or later; and if she knew he was only a selfish, drunken blackguard she might get over it all the sooner."

"You don"t know women, Jack," said Andy quietly. "And, anyway, even if she is a sensible woman, we"ve got a dead mate to consider as well as a living woman."

"But she"s sure to hear the truth sooner or later," I said, "the Boss was so well known."

"And that"s just the reason why the truth might be kept from her," said Andy. "If he wasn"t well known--and n.o.body could help liking him, after all, when he was straight--if he wasn"t so well known the truth might leak out unawares. She won"t know if I can help it, or at least not yet a while. If I see any chaps that come from the North I"ll put them up to it. I"ll tell M"Grath, the publican at Solong, too: he"s a straight man--he"ll keep his ears open and warn chaps. One of Mrs Baker"s sisters is staying with her, and I"ll give her a hint so that she can warn off any women that might get hold of a yarn. Besides, Mrs Baker is sure to go and live in Sydney, where all her people are--she was a Sydney girl; and she"s not likely to meet any one there that will tell her the truth.

I can tell her that it was the last wish of the Boss that she should shift to Sydney."

We smoked and thought a while, and by-and-by Andy had what he called a "happy thought". He went to his saddle-bags and got out the small canvas packet that Ned had given him: it was sewn up with packing-thread, and Andy ripped it open with his pocket-knife.

"What are you doing, Andy?" I asked.

"Ned"s an innocent old fool, as far as sin is concerned," said Andy. "I guess he hasn"t looked through the Boss"s letters, and I"m just going to see that there"s nothing here that will make liars of us."

He looked through the letters and papers by the light of the fire. There were some letters from Mrs Baker to her husband, also a portrait of her and the children; these Andy put aside. But there were other letters from barmaids and women who were not fit to be seen in the same street with the Boss"s wife; and there were portraits--one or two flash ones.

There were two letters from other men"s wives too.

"And one of those men, at least, was an old mate of his!" said Andy, in a tone of disgust.

He threw the lot into the fire; then he went through the Boss"s pocket-book and tore out some leaves that had notes and addresses on them, and burnt them too. Then he sewed up the packet again and put it away in his saddle-bag.

"Such is life!" said Andy, with a yawn that might have been half a sigh.

We rode into Solong early in the day, turned our horses out in a paddock, and put up at M"Grath"s pub. until such time as we made up our minds as to what we"d do or where we"d go. We had an idea of waiting until the shearing season started and then making Out-Back to the big sheds.

Neither of us was in a hurry to go and face Mrs Baker. "We"ll go after dinner," said Andy at first; then after dinner we had a drink, and felt sleepy--we weren"t used to big dinners of roast-beef and vegetables and pudding, and, besides, it was drowsy weather--so we decided to have a snooze and then go. When we woke up it was late in the afternoon, so we thought we"d put it off till after tea. "It wouldn"t be manners to walk in while they"re at tea," said Andy--"it would look as if we only came for some grub."

But while we were at tea a little girl came with a message that Mrs Baker wanted to see us, and would be very much obliged if we"d call up as soon as possible. You see, in those small towns you can"t move without the thing getting round inside of half an hour.

"We"ll have to face the music now!" said Andy, "and no get out of it."

He seemed to hang back more than I did. There was another pub. opposite where Mrs Baker lived, and when we got up the street a bit I said to Andy--

"Suppose we go and have another drink first, Andy? We might be kept in there an hour or two."

"You don"t want another drink," said Andy, rather short. "Why, you seem to be going the same way as the Boss!" But it was Andy that edged off towards the pub. when we got near Mrs Baker"s place. "All right!" he said. "Come on! We"ll have this other drink, since you want it so bad."

We had the drink, then we b.u.t.toned up our coats and started across the road--we"d bought new shirts and collars, and spruced up a bit. Half-way across Andy grabbed my arm and asked--

"How do you feel now, Jack?"

"Oh, I"M all right," I said.

"For G.o.d"s sake!" said Andy, "don"t put your foot in it and make a mess of it."

"I won"t, if you don"t."

Mrs Baker"s cottage was a little weather-board box affair back in a garden. When we went in through the gate Andy gripped my arm again and whispered--

"For G.o.d"s sake stick to me now, Jack!"

"I"ll stick all right," I said--"you"ve been having too much beer, Andy."

I had seen Mrs Baker before, and remembered her as a cheerful, contented sort of woman, bustling about the house and getting the Boss"s shirts and things ready when we started North. Just the sort of woman that is contented with housework and the children, and with nothing particular about her in the way of brains. But now she sat by the fire looking like the ghost of herself. I wouldn"t have recognised her at first. I never saw such a change in a woman, and it came like a shock to me.

Her sister let us in, and after a first glance at Mrs Baker I had eyes for the sister and no one else. She was a Sydney girl, about twenty-four or twenty-five, and fresh and fair--not like the sun-browned women we were used to see. She was a pretty, bright-eyed girl, and seemed quick to understand, and very sympathetic. She had been educated, Andy had told me, and wrote stories for the Sydney "Bulletin" and other Sydney papers. She had her hair done and was dressed in the city style, and that took us back a bit at first.

"It"s very good of you to come," said Mrs Baker in a weak, weary voice, when we first went in. "I heard you were in town."

"We were just coming when we got your message," said Andy. "We"d have come before, only we had to see to the horses."

"It"s very kind of you, I"m sure," said Mrs Baker.

They wanted us to have tea, but we said we"d just had it. Then Miss Standish (the sister) wanted us to have tea and cake; but we didn"t feel as if we could handle cups and saucers and pieces of cake successfully just then.

There was something the matter with one of the children in a back-room, and the sister went to see to it. Mrs Baker cried a little quietly.

"You mustn"t mind me," she said. "I"ll be all right presently, and then I want you to tell me all about poor Bob. It"s seeing you, that saw the last of him, that set me off."

Andy and I sat stiff and straight, on two chairs against the wall, and held our hats tight, and stared at a picture of Wellington meeting Blucher on the opposite wall. I thought it was lucky that that picture was there.

The child was calling "mumma", and Mrs Baker went in to it, and her sister came out. "Best tell her all about it and get it over," she whispered to Andy. "She"ll never be content until she hears all about poor Bob from some one who was with him when he died. Let me take your hats. Make yourselves comfortable."

She took the hats and put them on the sewing-machine. I wished she"d let us keep them, for now we had nothing to hold on to, and nothing to do with our hands; and as for being comfortable, we were just about as comfortable as two cats on wet bricks.

When Mrs Baker came into the room she brought little Bobby Baker, about four years old; he wanted to see Andy. He ran to Andy at once, and Andy took him up on his knee. He was a pretty child, but he reminded me too much of his father.

"I"m so glad you"ve come, Andy!" said Bobby.

"Are you, Bobby?"

"Yes. I wants to ask you about daddy. You saw him go away, didn"t you?"

and he fixed his great wondering eyes on Andy"s face.