Page:The little blue devil (IA littlebluedevil00mackiala).pdf/59

“Haven’t got one. All my things belong to the station. I’m—I’m breaking contract.”

“Stay till the morning, anyhow—even if y’d got y’ cheque you’d do that. And have some tucker—an’ take some with you.”

“If I eat here again I’ll choke, and if I sleep here the roof’ll fall in on my head. If you want to be a sport, give me a box of matches—your own matches—and I’ll be able to make some sort of fire for myself. . . . So long, Cookee; your chops are burning.”

With a final handshake he turned and walked out of the hut just in time to avoid the bulk of the men as they came back from the horse-yards. It was near their tea-time, but he would have starved sooner than touch the Paranui food just then. Somehow it all seemed to mean Baldwin. He could walk almost steadily now, with a continual effort. It was very cold and the night was rapidly coming on, but the rain had ceased. The keen air was really a tonic to him, his sickness had almost gone; and though he was racked with pain from head to foot he could think quite clearly. He meant to walk to Starling Creek that night if he could get so far; if not, he would probably find some fairly dry spot under the lee of a bush, and there was always Cookee’s box of matches if he had the luck to get any dry fuel at all. Thank Heaven he knew how to light fires from unpromising materials; that was not the least of the benefits he had got from those two years at Paranui!

He did not get as far as Starling Creek that night, but turned up in the morning, a grey-faced, secretive little misery, and received flour and tea from the Hut cook there—station rations, swagman’s rations—and a blanket from the cook thrown in, as a return for some totally unnecessary wood-chopping which that Samaritan implored him to do. He had cast about in his mind for some other