It was dark enough for anything in Dead Man's Gap -- a round, warm, close darkness, in which retreating sounds seemed to be cut off suddenly at a distance of a hundred yards or so, instead of growing faint and fainter, and dying away, to strike the ear once or twice again -- and after minutes, it might seem -- with startling distinctness, before being finally lost in the distance, as it is on clear, frosty nights.
So with the sounds of horses' hoofs, stumbling on the rough bridle-track through the "saddle", the clatter of hoof-clipped stones and scrape of gravel down the hidden "siding", and the low sound of men's voices, blurred and speaking in monosyllables and at intervals it seemed, and in hushed, awed tones, as though they carried a corpse.
To practical eyes, grown used to such a darkness, and at the nearest point, the passing blurrs would have suggested two riders on bush hacks leading a third with an empty saddle on its back -- a lady's or "side-saddle", if one could have distinguished the horns. They may have struck a soft track or level, or rounded the buttress of the hill higher up, but before they had time to reach or round the foot of the spur, blurs, whispers, stumble and clatter of hoofs, jingle of bridle rings, and the occasional clank together of stirrup irons, seemed shut off as suddenly and completely as though a great sound-proof door had swung to behind them.
It was dark enough on the glaringest of days down in the lonely hollow or "pocket", between two spurs, at the head of a blind gully behind Mount Buckaroo, where there was a more or less dusty patch, barely defined even in broad daylight by a spidery dog-legged fence on three sides, and a thin "two-rail" (dignified with the adjective "split-rail" -- though rails and posts were mostly of saplings split in halves) running along the frontage. In about the middle of it a little slab hut, overshadowed by a big stringy-bark shed, was pointed out as Johnny Mears's Farm.
"Black as -- as charcoal," said Johnny Mears. He had never seen coal, and was a cautious man, whose ideas came slowly.
He stooped, close by the fence, with his hands on his knees, to "sky" the loom of his big shed and so get his bearings.
He had been to have a look at the penned calves, and see that all slip-rails were up and pegged, for the words of John Mears junior, especially when delivered rapidly and shrilly and in injured tones, were not to be relied upon in these matters.
"It's hot enough to melt the belly out of my fiddle," said Johnny Mears to his wife, who sat on a three-legged stool by the rough table in the little whitewashed "end-room", putting a patch of patches over the seat of a pair of moleskin knickerbockers. He lit his pipe, moved a stool to the side of the great empty fireplace, where it looked cooler -- might have been cooler on account of a possible draught suggested by the presence of the chimney, and where, therefore, he felt a breath cooler. He took his fiddle from a convenient shelf, tuned it slowly and carefully, holding his pipe (in his mouth) well up and to one side, as if the fiddle were an inquisitive and restless baby.
He played "Little Drops o' Brandy" three times, right through, without variations, blinking solemnly the while; then he put the violin carefully back in its box, and started to cut up another pipeful.
"You should have gone, Johnny," said the haggard little woman.
"Rackin' the horse out a night like this," retorted Johnny, "and startin' ploughin' to-morrow. It ain't worth while.
Let them come for me if they want me. Dance on a night like this!
Why! they'll dance in ----"
"But you promised. It won't do you no good, Johnny."
"It won't do me no harm."
The little woman went on stitching.
"It's smotherin' hot," said Johnny, with an impatient oath.
"I don't know whether I'll turn in, or turn out, under the shed to-night.
It's too d----d hot to roost indoors."
She bent her head lower over the patch. One smoked and the other stitched in silence for twenty minutes or so, during which time Johnny might be supposed to have been deliberating listlessly as to whether he'd camp out on account of the heat, or turn in.
But he broke the silence with a clout at a mosquito on the nape of his neck, and a bad word.
"I wish you wouldn't swear so much, Johnny," she said wearily-- "at least not to-night."
He looked at her blankly.
"Why -- why to-night? What's the matter with you to-night, Mary?
What's to-night more than any other night to you? I see no harm -- can't a man swear when a mosquito sticks him?"
"I -- I was only thinking of the boys, Johnny."
"The boys! Why, they're both on the hay in the shed." He stared at her again, shifted uneasily, crossed the other leg tightly, frowned, blinked, and reached for the matches. "You look a bit off-colour, Mary.
It's the heat that makes us all a bit ratty at times.
Better put that by and have a swill o' oatmeal and water, and turn in."
"It's too hot to go to bed. I couldn't sleep. I'm all right.
I'll -- I'll just finish this. Just reach me a drink from the water-bag -- the pannikin's on the hob there, by your boot."
He scratched his head helplessly, and reached for the drink.
When he sat down again, he felt strangely restless. "Like a hen that didn't know where to lay," he put it. He couldn't settle down or keep still, and didn't seem to enjoy his pipe somehow. He rubbed his head again.
"There's a thunderstorm comin'," he said. "That's what it is; and the sooner it comes the better."
He went to the back door, and stared at the blackness to the east, and, sure enough, lightning was blinking there.
"It's coming, sure enough; just hang out and keep cool for another hour, and you'll feel the difference."
