Dorothy Eden by Vines of Yarrabee

hustled outside.
    ‘I was asking if they would give him some food. He’s starving.’
    ‘He’ll soon find there are worse things than being hungry,’ Gilbert said grimly.
    ‘Are there?’
    ‘Of course there are. I’d prefer not to mention them to your pretty ears.’
    ‘Have you ever been hungry like he is? He was so hungry he forgot to be careful. That’s how—I caught him.’
    ‘And were the bravest woman in the world,’ Gilbert declared, proudly, entirely failing to understand what she was trying to say.
    ‘She deserves a pint,’ someone shouted. ‘Give her a pint. She’s a regular heroine.’
    But Eugenia begged to go upstairs. She was not a heroine. What she had done had been perfectly simple. She had suffered no damage but a bruised wrist.
    ‘You can’t make light of it in that way,’ Gilbert said. She saw that his eyes were very bright and that now his first shock was over he looked as if he were enjoying the excitement. ‘Mrs Jarvis will take you upstairs. I’ll be up when I have assured myself that our prisoner is safely secured. We’ll have to mount a guard over him until the troopers arrive.’
    Upstairs, in the small bedroom from which she had seemed to be away for an age, Eugenia asked, ‘Where will they put him, Mrs Jarvis?’
    ‘They’ll have to tie him to a tree. I’ve seen that done more than once.’
    ‘A tree! Like a dog!’
    ‘None of those rotten old sheds would hold him. That pantry door wouldn’t have held him a minute longer, would it?’
    Eugenia shivered violently.
    ‘He put his hand over my mouth. I must wash. I can still smell his smell.’
    ‘You were very brave, ma’am.’ Mrs Jarvis’s eyes were warm with admiration. ‘Can I get something to soothe you? You’re all of a tremble. Some milk with a dash of brandy?’
    ‘I wish I’d let him go,’ Eugenia whispered.
    ‘What did you say, ma’am?’
    ‘I wouldn’t have been so frightened if I had known how small and thin he was.’
    ‘But he had a gun. He was dangerous. Don’t you be wasting your sympathy on him.’
    It was quite some time before Gilbert came upstairs. Eugenia had obediently drunk the milk lavishly laced with brandy that Mrs Jarvis had brought. Since she had scarcely eaten all day the mixture had immediately gone to her head. In a daze, she had allowed Mrs Jarvis to undress her, put on her nightgown, and settle her in bed. Her head spinning, her eyes smarting and burning, she had lain listening to this terrible night’s unfamiliar sounds. A dog barking incessantly, men’s voices, Mrs Muldooney shouting something in her harsh tones, a horse galloping off. She thought she heard someone crying, too. But the brandy that had made her head spin must have distorted her hearing. That deep uneven breathing, like caught sobs, was the intermittent rustle of wind in the metallic leaves of the gum tree near the window.
    The tree to which the prisoner was tied, the cord cutting into his thin wrists?
    When Gilbert came in quietly, he leaned over the bed to see if she slept. At first she pretended to, not wanting to look at him in case that wild excitement was still in his eyes. She had once seen one of her father’s gamekeepers look like that when he had caught a weasel in a trap and had found that the animal was still alive.
    Men had this overpowering pleasure in hunting down a dangerous quarry. It was perfectly natural and right. Murderous felons, as well as weasels, must be destroyed.
    ‘Eugenia! Are you asleep?’
    Her lashes trembled. ‘Mrs Jarvis made me drink—quite half a pint—of brandy.’
    ‘Splendid.’ He was laughing softly. ‘Exactly what you needed. I can’t tell you how proud I was of you tonight.’ He was taking off his clothes, dropping them in a great hurry on the floor. ‘I didn’t intend you to have such an initiation to this country, but you have passed your first test magnificently. I am almost glad it happened so that I could see your mettle. Which I knew you would