The Odds. Ethel M. Dell
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the early afternoon she went out to feed a few motherless lambs that her brother had placed in her charge. She stood in the shelter of a great barn with the little things clustering around her, while Robin, the old black hound, lay watching and snapping at the flies. Miles and miles of pasture stretched around her, broken here and there by thick scrub and occasional groups of blue gum trees.
The hot glare of the afternoon sun made the eyes ache, and she was glad when her task was over. When she stood up at length she was feeling a little giddy, and she leaned for a moment against the barn wall to steady herself. A rank growth of grass grew all about her feet, and as she stood there gazing rather dizzily downwards she saw a ripple pass along it close to the building.
Any but a "new chum" would have known the meaning of that small disturbance, for there was no breath of air to cause it. Any but a "new chum," being quite defenceless, would have beaten instant and swift retreat.
But Dot Burton in her inexperience had no thought of evil. She was only curious. She forgot her weariness, and bent down to watch the moving grass.
At the same moment Robin suddenly raised his head and looked keenly in the direction of the farm, with a growl. The girl barely heard him, so interested was she. She even stooped and parted the tall grass with her hands when unexpectedly it ceased to move.
The next instant she started back with a wild cry of horror. For it was as if the grass itself had suddenly come to malignant life under her hands. A shape—long, thin, vividly green—rose up before her, and swayed with an angry hiss.
Her cry seemed to galvanize Robin into action, for he sprang up fiercely barking, but his attention was not directed towards her. He leapt instead towards the house, yelling resentment as he went. And in a flash the green evil struck at the bare brown arm!
Dot shrieked again, shrieked like a demented creature, and in a moment, with hands flung wide, she was fleeing across the sun-baked yard.
She reached the open door immediately behind Robin, and sprang in headlong. Robin had ceased to bark, and was fawning at the feet of a man who had evidently just entered. He was bent down over the dog, fondling him with one hand. In the other something bright gleamed, and as he straightened himself the girl saw that it was a revolver; but she was too agitated to take much note of the fact.
She burst in upon him in breathless, horrified distress. "I've been bitten!" she cried to him. "Bitten by a snake!"
"Where?" he said.
He had her by the arm in a second and was pushing up the loose holland sleeve. Later she marvelled at his promptitude, his instant intuition. At the moment she was too terrified, too near collapse, to notice any of these things.
He pushed her down upon a chair and knelt beside her. She found herself staring down at a shock of straw-coloured hair, while the owner of it sucked and sucked with an almost brutal force at a place in the crook of her arm that felt as if a red-hot needle had been plunged into it. She could feel the drawing of his teeth against her flesh. It was a sensation almost more horrible than the actual snake-bite had been.
Twice he turned his head and spat into the hearth, and she saw that his face was smooth and young, the colour of sun-baked brick.
At last he looked up at her with the most extraordinarily blue eyes she had ever seen, and said, with a kindly twinkle in them, "I don't think you'll die this time, missis."
She looked from him to her arm. The bite showed no more than the sting of a nettle, but around it was the deep impress of his teeth. Certainly he had done his task thoroughly.
The kettle was singing over the fire. He got to his feet and patted Robin on the head. "Let's wash it," he said. "Is there a basin handy?"
Dot sat in her chair, feeling rather weak. He fetched a bowl and set it on a chair by her side. He poured water into it from the kettle.
She looked up at him rather apprehensively. "I needn't scald it, need I?"
He smiled down at her in instant reassurance, a vivid smile that warmed her fear-chilled heart. His teeth were white and regular, like the teeth of a young wild animal.
"There's some cold water somewhere, isn't there?" he said.
She told him where to find it, and he cooled the steaming water to a temperature that she could endure without flinching. Then he made her rest her arm in it.
"That'll comfort it," he said. "Now, have you got any spirits in the house?"
"I don't drink spirits," she said quickly.
He smiled again. "No? But you must this time—just to complete the cure. Tell me where to find them!"
His smile was certainly magnetic, for she told him without further protest.
When he brought the spirits, she looked at him for the first time with active interest.
"I suppose you are Inspector Hill," she said.
He was pouring whisky into a glass. He gave her a sidelong glance. "Now that's a very clever guess," he said. "What put you on to that?"
She smiled, mainly because he had meant her to smile. "I've been half expecting you all day," she said.
He looked down at her more fully as he finished his task. "That's very interesting," he said. "Who told you to expect me?"
"My brother—Jack Burton," she explained.
"Oh! Jack Burton is your brother, is he?" He contemplated her thoughtfully for a second or two. "Well, I seem to have turned up at the right moment," he said.
"Yes." She leaned forward with flushed face upraised. "And I haven't said 'Thank you' yet. I'm so grateful to you. I can't tell you how grateful."
"Don't!" he said. "Don't! Drink this instead! Drink to the lucky chance that sent me your way! I'm proud to have been of use to you."
She took the glass unwillingly. "I'm sure I shall hate it."
"It's the best antidote to snake-poison out," he said. "I swear it won't upset you. If it makes you sleepy, well, you're in the right place and safe enough."
She liked his utterance of the last words. They had a genuine ring. "But, if I drink, so must you!" she said. "And eat, too! Jack said I was to give you a meal if you came."
He smiled again, a large, humorous smile. "That's the kindest thing Jack Burton has ever done," he said, with warm approval. "I'll join you with pleasure, missis. This man-trapping business is hungry work for all of us."
Dot frowned a little. It did not please her to be reminded of his mission. Her former prejudice began to revive within her, his kindness notwithstanding.
"I don't like the thought of it myself," she told him abruptly. "But, of course, I'm only a 'new chum.'"
"What?" he said, pausing in the act of pouring himself out a drink. "That sounds as if you want that scoundrel Bill to get away."
She coloured in some confusion under his look. How could she expect to make a policeman understand? "No—no!" she said, with vehemence. "I'm not quite so soft as that. I'd shoot him myself if he came my way. But I hate to think of a dozen men all on the track of one. It really isn't fair."
He laughed, but without superiority. "And yet you'd swell the odds? Do you call that fair?"
Dot paused to collect her arguments. It seemed that possibly even this machine of justice carried a small fragment of sympathy in his soul. Certainly he was not the judicial automaton she had expected him to be.
"It's like this," she said. "I'd shoot him if he came my way because he has done us a lot of mischief, and I want to stop it. But I'd do it squarely. I wouldn't do it when he wasn't looking. And I wouldn't—ever—make it my profession to hunt down criminals and even employ black men to help. I think that's hateful. I couldn't live that way. I'd be above it."
"I see." He lifted his glass to her in a silent toast, and drank