CHAPTER VI.
BOB'S VERDICT.
She found Eustace standing beside his bed staring at it in utterbewilderment.
"My dearest boy, what is it?" she asked.
"Why, look at that!" Eustace exclaimed, pointing down at thecoverlet.
From about the centre of the bed on the right side, down almost tothe foot, was a long brown streak like a burn: the coverlet was cutand charred.
Mrs. Orban stared at it in astonishment
"What can it be?" she said.
"I can't think," Eustace replied.
"You had better fetch Robertson," Mrs. Orban said. "There issomething very odd about this."
"Don't you mind being left alone, mother?" Eustace asked, lookinground anxiously, as if he thought an explanation of the mysterymight jump from under a bed or out of a cupboard.
"Of course not, dear," Mrs. Orban replied gravely.
It amused her even in her anxiety that this slender scrap offourteen should assume such an air of protection, but it touchedher also, and she would not for worlds have let him fancy she couldsmile at him.
Robertson hurried to the spot immediately, and when he saw thecondition of the coverlet he looked utterly nonplussed.
"Well, this is a queer state of things," he said, rubbing his headmeditatively. "I never saw anything to equal it."
Further examination proved that not only was the coverlet burntright through, but the under clothes were scorched and crumbledlike tinder at a touch.
"It looks like the track of a shot," Robertson said; "but how couldit come there?"
"I don't know," Eustace said, "unless some one was kneeling on thefloor at the foot of the bed and tried to shoot me without raisinghis hand. The shot sounded most awfully close."
Robertson took a quick survey of the situation, ending with anexamination of the wall at the head of the bed.
"No," he said, "that couldn't be. The bullet would have gone intothe pillow or lodged in the wall, but there isn't a sign of it.Seems to me it went the other way by the mark. It is broadest inthe middle of the bed."
He followed the line with his eye, then glanced across the room.
"Why," he exclaimed, going over to the opposite wall, "here is themark of the bullet--here is the bullet itself, deep in the wood.That shot went off from the middle of your bed, lad."
Eustace looked incredulous, Mrs. Orban horrified. It was awful tothink that the boy had been in such danger. The man who had firedthat first alarming shot was close to him, perhaps bending overhim, when inadvertently the weapon had gone off! The mother couldpicture it only too vividly, and she felt sick at the thought ofthe ghastly peril.
"But what happened to the man?" questioned Eustace. "I was awake ina minute, and must have seen him."
"Not if he ducked under the bed," suggested Mrs. Orban. "He musthave been there when you came to me, and made his escape theinstant you were out of the way."
"Much more likely if he had knocked the youngster on the head tosilence him," argued Robertson, as he stood toying with Mr. Orban'srevolver. "I don't think that story will wash."
Quite suddenly the man threw back his head and laughed aloud.
"I have it," he said. "Eustace, you young rascal, what a scare youhave given us!"
"I!" exclaimed Eustace, with a touch of indignation in his tone.
"Yes, you," was the reply. "Why, you fired that first shotyourself; I'll bet you anything you did. You only shot once at thedingo--there are two chambers empty in this revolver. Come, own up;where was the revolver when you went to sleep?"
Eustace flushed crimson as the realization flooded his mind.
"It was in my hand when I jumped out of bed," he said. "I--I dobelieve I went to sleep holding it. I dropped off suddenly."
He remembered how inexplicably queer and shaken he had felt when heawoke. Now he came to think of it, he had been strangely jarred. Amere sound could scarcely have accounted for the feeling.
"Well, that clears the whole mystery, then," said Robertson. "Thereis no one lurking about the house, and there hasn't been anythingto be frightened about--except that you might have shot your ownfoot through, and lamed yourself for life."
"He might have killed himself," said Mrs. Orban seriously. "It wasa terribly dangerous thing to do."
She said nothing more, for it was evident Eustace felt very smalland uncomfortable. It was the tamest possible ending to what hadpromised to be such a stirring adventure--such a tale to tell!
Presently, when he was left alone to try and get a little sleepbefore it was time to get up and dress, the full humiliation of itovercame him. What would his father say? and Nesta? and, worse andworse, Bob Cochrane? How he would be laughed at--teased! He wouldnever be allowed to forget the dingo he had mistaken for ablack-fellow; and he felt hot all over when he thought of thatfoolish shot--the cause of all the commotion.
It was a very depressed Eustace who appeared at breakfast. He tookRobertson's unabated amusement so gravely that the engineer stoppedlaughing at him, and wondered if the youngster were sulking.
Mrs. Orban felt a good deal distressed to see how pale the boy was,and that he could hardly touch the food set before him. But everyone showed signs of exhaustion, as was natural after two nights ofsuch unusual strain. Mrs. Orban kept Eustace with her all day,setting him small jobs to keep him occupied. They all went to bedearly that night, and the household slept without rocking.
Next day, in the cool of the morning, Bob Cochrane rode over toinquire how the Orbans were getting on. Eustace heard him come--theboy was on the lookout for this particular visit--and as Bob walkedround one side of the veranda, Eustace disappeared along the other,left a message with Mary that he was going down to the mill, andstarted away from the house at a run. The truth was, he felt hesimply could not be present while Bob listened to the story of hisabsurd adventures; he wanted the narration to be over before hefaced the fusillade of chaff with which the young fellow mightpepper him. "He'll think me a silly little fool, I know he will,"Eustace told himself again and again; "and he'll say, 'What did Itell you about shooting recklessly?' I expect he'll think I'm ababy, not fit to be trusted with firearms. It's disgusting, justwhen I was hoping he might begin to think me worth taking outshooting with him soon."
Thoroughly out of conceit with himself, Eustace wished he need notgo home at all until Bob was certain to be gone. But no sooner didhe reach the mill and begin wandering about the rooms full ofmachinery than it struck him it had been rather cowardly even torun away for a time. Bob would know he had not felt equal to facinghim, and perhaps he would despise that as much as he was bound tobe amused at the other. The lad had a sharp tussle with himself,and at last started back up the hill with the feelings of a mostunwilling martyr going to the stake.
He was about two-thirds of the way up when he caught sight of BobCochrane coming swinging down towards him. Bob was just the kind offellow every boy wants to grow into--big, well-made, splendidlymanly; he looked jolly in his riding-suit.
"Hulloa!" he called as soon as he came within speaking distance.
"Hulloa!" Eustace called back tonelessly, his heart thumping hard,his colour coming and going ridiculously.
Bob waited till they met. Then, "Well, youngster," he said gravely,putting a big hand on the lad's shoulder and walking on beside him,"you've had a rough time since I saw you last. I don't wonder youshot at that dingo in the way you did; I should have done itmyself, I believe, under the circumstances."
Eustace's heart almost stopped beating, he was so surprised; hecould not speak a word.
"Of course that chap coming the night before put you all on edge,"proceeded Bob, "and you were flurried by the first shot. That mighthave been a nasty business too. Glad you didn't hurt yourself."
There was another pause, but Bob did not seem to mind. He went onagain presently,--
"It is just this kind of thing, I always think, that gives one abit of a useful warning: first, to be cautious; and second, to keepa cool head. You'll ne
ver go to sleep with a revolver ready cockedagain, and another time you will give yourself a second'sdeliberation before you fire at anything looking like a man. Itmight have been Robertson making a tour of the house, you know."
Eustace felt suddenly rather sick.
"I never thought of that," he said.
"Of course not," was the cheery response. "One doesn't look allround a question in a hurry, but one has to learn to remember theremay be two sides to it. You'll get the hang of the idea one ofthese days. I know it was a long time before I gave up wanting toshoot down everything I didn't quite like the looks of. Sometimesit turns out well, sometimes pretty badly."
He ended with a little laugh. Eustace, looking up into the merry,kindly face, knew that the awful time he had so dreaded was over,and it had not been an "awful time" after all. Bob did not thinkhim a fool; he might have done the same himself, he said. He onlywarned him to be more careful another time, and gave him thereasons why he should.
The boy had always admired this friend of the family; he positivelyglowed with pride at this minute that Bob was a friend of his own.Whatever might happen now, whoever might snub or laugh at him,Eustace had this comforting knowledge always at heart--Bobunderstood, and Bob was a man no one would laugh at.
"He is a brick," thought the lad warmly. "I wish there wasanything, anything in the world I could do to show him what a brickI think him. If ever there is, won't I just do it! The moredangerous it is the better."
"I remember once having a pretty gruesome experience," said Bob,chatting on easily. "I expect you've never heard about it, becauseyou were nothing but a kiddy at the time, and it has beenforgotten lately. I was going home across our plantation with twoother fellows late at night--much later than the mater liked us tobe out. In order to be as quick as possible, when we got to thelittle line running to the mill we hoisted the trolley on to therails and began pushing ourselves along at a great rate. It was thesort of darkness one can peer through, making things look weird anddistorted, often much bigger than they really are."
"Like the dingo."
"Like the dingo. Well, we were getting along finely, when we got torather a steep gradient and had to go slower up it. Near the topone of us suddenly caught sight of something unusual to the left ofthe line. It looked like a huge cowering figure, wide but not tall.Whether four-legged or two-legged it was impossible to say becauseof the gloom. It wasn't a nice feeling to have this thing silentlywaiting for one. We all boo'd and shoo'd first, thinking that if itwere a beast of any sort it would scoot at the noise; but it didn'tstir an inch or make a sound. We felt pretty creepy by then, forblack-fellow tales were even commoner in those days than they arenow. From the size of it we guessed it might have been a group ofthree men. Then we shouted, 'Hands up and declare yourself, or wefire!' But still the creature didn't move or speak."
"My hat!" exclaimed Eustace sympathetically.
"We had got to get past it somehow to reach home, for it wasn'tlikely we could stay there all night. We gave it two more chances,and then we fired for all we were worth. There were instantlyshrieks, groans, and such horrible sounds that we waited fornothing more, but pushing our stakes into the ground, sent thetrolley flying past the awful spot and down the next hill. How wedidn't turn over and get killed down that incline I don't know--itwas the one nearest home, you know, where one has to be sofearfully careful about putting on a brake as a rule. However, wegot in all right, and gave a detailed account of our adventure.Every one was interested and puzzled. Father was a little inclinedto laugh; he said it was probably the stump of a tree, but ofcourse we had evidence against that in the genuine shrieks andgroans following our shots. 'Well, we must just go first thingto-morrow,' father said, 'and look into the matter by daylight.'"
"And did you?" asked Eustace eagerly.
"Rather! I should just think we did--father, a friend of his whowas staying with us, and the two boys I had been out with. We rode,and when we got to the spot the first thing we saw was the hugestump of a newly-felled tree, right in the very place we had seenthe gruesome object."
Eustace whistled.
"But a tree couldn't shriek and groan," he objected.
"So _we_ said when father began minutely examining the bark; and toour satisfaction there wasn't a single shot mark in the tree,though we must have fired half a dozen between us. 'We can't haveseen this,' I said, feeling rather cock-a-hoopy; 'it must have beensomething nearer.' We were just all puzzling our heads over thematter when a Chinkee came running towards us from a group of hutsnot very far off. He was gesticulating and making a fearful fuss.We followed him in a fine state of excitement, and he led us to alittle low shed with a railing before it. We looked in, and therelay two dead pigs!"
"Two dead pigs!" cried Eustace.
"Yes. It was pretty humiliating, for it just proved we had aimed atthe tree and missed it. Instead, we shot the Chinkee's inoffensivepigs. It was many a long day before that joke was forgotten againstus. Moreover, amongst us we had to scrape a pound together to paythe Chinaman for his loss. I never felt so small in my life."
Eustace could well appreciate the sensation after his ownexperiences.
Bob took a very light view of the real visit the Orbans had hadfrom the black-fellow two nights before.
"He wouldn't have hurt any one," said the young fellow. "He wasnothing but a cowardly thief, or he wouldn't have behaved in theway he did. I'm only sorry you've offered a reward for the things;it will be an incentive to other fellows to do the same. However, Idare say, with Robertson sleeping up here, no one will ventureagain. I shouldn't worry if I were you, Mrs. Orban."
"I will try not to," Mrs. Orban answered bravely.
They had a quiet enough night again to warrant confidence, andevery one felt rested and refreshed next day.
Just after breakfast Kate appeared to tell her mistress that aChinaman from the plantation wished to speak to her. His name wasSinkum Fung, and he was the plantation storekeeper, a man whothought a good deal of himself, but for lying and trickery, Mr.Orban declared, was no better than his neighbours the coolies whodealt at his shop.
As soon as Sinkum Fung was shown on to the veranda, he did a gooddeal of bowing and scraping by way of politeness, and he had somuch to say on the subject of his own unimpeachable integrity thatit was a long time before Mrs. Orban could bring him to anexplanation of his early visit. Both she and Eustace guessed hemust be wanting to sell something, and probably hoped to drive agood bargain in Mr. Orban's absence, the cunning of the averageChinese being unsurpassed.
After a considerable preamble, Sinkum began the followingremarkable tale, all told in such strange Chinkee patter, and withso much self-praise interspersed, that it took the listeners' wholeattention to unravel it.