The Amateur Cracksman E. W. Hornung (desktop ebook reader txt) 📖

riderless horse coming full tilt through the bush, with the saddle twisted round and the stirrup-irons ringing. Without thinking, I had a shot at heading him with the doctor’s mare, and blocked him just enough to allow a man who came galloping after to do the rest.

“ ‘Thank ye, mister,’ growled the man, a huge chap in a red checked shirt, with a beard like W. G. Grace, but the very devil of an expression.

“ ‘Been an accident?’ said I, reining up.

“ ‘Yes,’ said he, scowling as though he defied me to ask any more.

“ ‘And a nasty one,’ I said, ‘if that’s blood on the saddle!’

“Well, Bunny, I may be a blackguard myself, but I don’t think I ever looked at a fellow as that chap looked at me. But I stared him out, and forced him to admit that it was blood on the twisted saddle, and after that he became quite tame. He told me exactly what had happened. A mate of his had been dragged under a branch, and had his nose smashed, but that was all; had sat tight after it till he dropped from loss of blood; another mate was with him back in the bush.

“As I’ve said already, Bunny, I wasn’t the old stager that I am now⁠—in any respect⁠—and we parted good enough friends. He asked me which way I was going, and, when I told him, he said I should save seven miles, and get a good hour earlier to Yea, by striking off the track and making for a peak that we could see through the trees, and following a creek that I should see from the peak. Don’t smile, Bunny! I began by saying I was a child in those days. Of course, the shortcut was the long way round; and it was nearly dark when that unlucky mare and I saw the single street of Yea.

“I was looking for the bank when a fellow in a white suit ran down from the veranda.

“ ‘Mr. Raffles?’ said he.

“ ‘Mr. Raffles,’ said I, laughing as I shook his hand.

“ ‘You’re late.’

“ ‘I was misdirected.’

“ ‘That all? I’m relieved,’ he said. ‘Do you know what they are saying? There are some brand-new bushrangers on the road between Whittlesea and this⁠—a second Kelly gang! They’d have caught a Tartar in you, eh?’

“ ‘They would in you,’ I retorted, and my tu quoque shut him up and seemed to puzzle him. Yet there was much more sense in it than in his compliment to me, which was absolutely pointless.

“ ‘I’m afraid you’ll find things pretty rough,’ he resumed, when he had unstrapped my valise, and handed my reins to his man. ‘It’s lucky you’re a bachelor like myself.’

“I could not quite see the point of this remark either, since, had I been married, I should hardly have sprung my wife upon him in this free-and-easy fashion. I muttered the conventional sort of thing, and then he said I should find it all right when I settled, as though I had come to graze upon him for weeks! ‘Well,’ thought I, ‘these Colonials do take the cake for hospitality!’ And, still marvelling, I let him lead me into the private part of the bank.

“ ‘Dinner will be ready in a quarter of an hour,’ said he as we entered. ‘I thought you might like a tub first, and you’ll find all ready in the room at the end of the passage. Sing out if there’s anything you want. Your luggage hasn’t turned up yet, by the way, but here’s a letter that came this morning.’

“ ‘Not for me?’

“ ‘Yes; didn’t you expect one?’

“ ‘I certainly did not!’

“ ‘Well, here it is.’

“And, as he lit me to my room, I read my own superscription of the previous day⁠—to W. F. Raffles!

“Bunny, you’ve had your wind bagged at footer, I daresay; you know what that’s like? All I can say is that my moral wind was bagged by that letter as I hope, old chap, I have never yet bagged yours. I couldn’t speak. I could only stand with my own letter in my hands until he had the good taste to leave me by myself.

“W. F. Raffles! We had mistaken each other for W. F. Raffles⁠—for the new manager who had not yet arrived! Small wonder we had conversed at cross-purposes; the only wonder was that we had not discovered our mutual mistake. How the other man would have laughed! But I⁠—I could not laugh. By Jove, no, it was no laughing matter for me! I saw the whole thing in a flash, without a tremor, but with the direst depression from my own single point of view. Call it callous if you like, Bunny, but remember that I was in much the same hole as you’ve since been in yourself, and that I had counted on this W. F. Raffles even as you counted on A. J. I thought of the man with the W. G. beard⁠—the riderless horse and the bloody saddle⁠—the deliberate misdirection that had put me off the track and out of the way⁠—and now the missing manager and the report of bushrangers at this end. But I simply don’t pretend to have felt any personal pity for a man whom I had never seen; that kind of pity’s usually cant; and besides, all mine was needed for myself.

“I was in as big a hole as ever. What the devil was I to do? I doubt if I have sufficiently impressed upon you the absolute necessity of my returning to Melbourne in funds. As a matter of fact it was less the necessity than my own determination which I can truthfully ascribe as absolute.

“Money I would have⁠—but how⁠—but how? Would this stranger be open to persuasion⁠—if I told him the truth? No; that would set us all scouring the country for the rest of the night. Why should I tell him? Suppose I left him to find out his mistake⁠ ⁠… would anything be gained? Bunny, I give you my