Robbery Under Arms

R >> Rolf Boldrewood >> Robbery Under Arms

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`I'd like a watch and chain,' she said, pretending to look a little offended.
`I suppose I may as well ask for a good thing at once.'

Starlight pulled out a pocket-book, and, quite solemn and regular,
made a note of it.

`It's yours,' he said, `within a month. If I cannot conveniently call
and present it in person, I'll send it by a sure hand, as they used to say;
and now, Jim, boot and saddle.'

The horses were out by this time; the groom was walking Rainbow up and down;
he'd put a regular French-polish on his coat, and the old horse was
arching his neck and chawing his bit as if he thought he was going to start
for the Bargo Town Plate. Jonathan himself was holding our two horses,
but looking at him.

`My word!' he said, `that's a real picture of a horse;
he's too good for a -- well -- these roads; he ought to be in Sydney
carrying some swell about and never knowing what a day's hardship feels like.
Isn't he a regular out-and-outer to look at? And they tell me his looks
is about the worst of him. Well -- here's luck!' Starlight had called
for drinks all round before we started. `Here's luck to roads and coaches,
and them as lives by 'em. They'll miss the old coaching system some day --
mark my word. I don't hold with these railways they're talkin' about
-- all steam and hurry-scurry; it starves the country.'

`Quite right, Jonathan,' says Starlight, throwing his leg over Rainbow,
and chucking the old groom a sovereign. `The times have never been
half as good as in the old coaching days, before we ever smelt a funnel
in New South Wales. But there's a coach or two left yet, isn't there?
and sometimes they're worth attending to.'

He bowed and smiled to the girls, and Rainbow sailed off with
his beautiful easy, springy stride. He always put me in mind of the deer
I once saw at Mulgoa, near Penrith; I'd never seen any before.
My word! how one of them sailed over a farmer's wheat paddock fence.
He'd been in there all night, and when he saw us coming
he just up and made for the fence, and flew it like a bird.
I never saw any horse have the same action, only Rainbow.
You couldn't tire him, and he was just the same the end of the day
as the beginning. If he hadn't fallen into Starlight's hands as a colt
he'd have been a second-class racehorse, and wore out his life
among touts and ringmen. He was better where he was. Off we went;
what a ride we had that night! Just as well we'd fed and rested
before we started, else we should never have held out.
All that night long we had to go, and keep going. A deal of the road
was rough -- near the Shoalhaven country, across awful deep gullies
with a regular climb-up the other side, like the side of a house.
Through dismal ironbark forests that looked as black by night
as if all the tree-trunks were cast-iron and the leaves gun-metal.
The night wasn't as dark as it might have been, but now and again
there was a storm, and the whole sky turned as black as a wolf's throat,
as father used to say. We got a few knocks and scrapes against the trees,
but, partly through the horses being pretty clever in their kind of way,
and having sharpish eyesight of our own, we pulled through.
It's no use talking, sometimes I thought Jim must lose his way.
Starlight told us he'd made up his mind that we were going
round and round, and would fetch up about where we'd started from,
and find the Moss Vale police waiting there for us.

`All right, Captain,' says Jim; `don't you flurry yourself.
I've been along this track pretty often this last few months,
and I can steer by the stars. Look at the Southern Cross there;
you keep him somewhere on the right shoulder, and you'll pull up
not so very far off that black range above old Rocky Flat.'

`You're not going to be so mad as to call at your own place, Jim, are you?'
says he. `Goring's sure to have a greyhound or two ready to slip
in case the hare makes for her old form.'

`Trust old dad for that,' says Jim; `he knows Dick and you
are on the grass again. He'll meet us before we get to the place
and have fresh horses. I'll bet he's got a chap or two that he can trust
to smell out the traps if they are close handy the old spot.
They'll be mighty clever if they get on the blind side of father.'

`Well, we must chance it, I suppose,' I said; `but we were sold once,
and I've not much fancy for going back again.'

`They're all looking for you the other way this blessed minute,
I'll go bail,' says Jim. `Most of the coves that bolt from Berrima
takes down the southern road to get across the border into Port Philip
as soon as they can work it. They always fancy they are safer there.'

`So they are in some ways; I wouldn't mind if we were back there again,'
I said. `There's worse places than Melbourne; but once we get to the Hollow,
and that'll be some time to-day, we may take it easy and spell
for a week or two. How they'll wonder what the deuce has become of us.'

The night was long, and that cold that Jim's beard was froze
as stiff as a board; but I sat on my horse, I declare to heaven,
and never felt anything but pleasure and comfort to think I was loose again.
You've seen a dog that's been chained up. Well, when he's let loose,
don't he go chevying and racing about over everything and into everything
that's next or anigh him? He'll jump into water or over a fence,
and turn aside for nothing. He's mad with joy and the feeling of being
off the chain; he can't hardly keep from barking till he's hoarse,
and rushing through and over everything till he's winded and done up.
Then he lies down with his tongue out and considers it all over.

Well a man's just like that when he's been on the chain.
He mayn't jump about so much, though I've seen foreign fellows do that
when their collar was unbuckled; but he feels the very same things
in his heart as that dog does, you take my word for it.

So, as I said, though I was sitting on a horse all that
long cold winter's night through, and had to mind my eye a bit
for the road and the rocks and the hanging branches,
I felt my heart swell that much and my courage rise that I didn't care
whether the night was going to turn into a snowstorm like
we'd been in Kiandra way, or whether we'd have a dozen rivers to swim,
like the head-waters of the M`Alister, in Gippsland, as nearly drowned
the pair of us. There I sat in my saddle like a man in a dream,
lettin' my horse follow Jim's up hill and down dale, and half the time
lettin' go his head and givin' him his own road. Everything, too, I seemed
to notice and to be pleased with somehow. Sometimes it was a rock wallaby
out on the feed that we'd come close on before we saw one another,
and it would jump away almost under the horse's neck, taking two or three
awful long springs and lighting square and level among the rocks
after a drop-leap of a dozen feet, like a cat jumping out of a window.
But the cat's got four legs to balance on and the kangaroo only two.
How they manage it and measure the distance so well, God only knows.
Then an old 'possum would sing out, or a black-furred flying squirrel
-- pongos, the blacks call 'em -- would come sailing down
from the top of an ironbark tree, with all his stern sails spread,
as the sailors say, and into the branches of another,
looking as big as an eagle-hawk. And then we'd come round
the corner of a little creek flat and be into the middle of a mob
of wild horses that had come down from the mountain to feed at night.
How they'd scurry off through the scrub and up the range, where it was like
the side of a house, and that full of slate-bars all upon edge
that you could smell the hoofs of the brumbies as the sharp stones
rasped and tore and struck sparks out of them like you do the parings
in a blacksmith's shop.

Then, just as I thought daybreak was near, a great mopoke
flits close over our heads without any rustling or noise,
like the ghost of a bird, and begins to hoot in a big, bare, hollow tree
just ahead of us. Hoo-hoo! hoo-hoo! The last time I heard it,
it made me shiver a bit. Now I didn't care. I was a desperate man
that had done bad things, and was likely to do worse.
But I was free of the forest again, and had a good horse under me;
so I laughed at the bird and rode on.

Chapter 21

Daylight broke when we were close up to the Black Range, safe enough,
a little off the line but nothing to signify. Then we hit off the track
that led over the Gap and down into a little flat on a creek
that ran the same way as ours did.

Jim had managed for father and Warrigal to meet us somewhere near here
with fresh horses. There was an old shepherd's hut that stood by itself
almost covered with marsh-mallows and nettles. As we came down
the steep track a dog came up snuffing and searching about
the grass and stones as if he'd lost something. It was Crib.

`Now we're getting home, Jim,' says Starlight. `It's quite a treat
to see the old scamp again. Well, old man,' he says to the dog,
`how's all getting on at the Hollow?' The dog came right up to Rainbow
and rubbed against his fetlock, and jumped up two or three times
to see if he could touch his rider. He was almost going to bark,
he seemed that glad to see him and us.

Dad was sitting on a log by the hut smoking, just the same as he was
before he left us last time. He was holding two fresh horses,
and we were not sorry to see them. Horses are horses, and there wasn't
much left in our two. We must have ridden a good eighty miles that night,
and it was as bad as a hundred by daylight.

Father came a step towards us as we jumped off. By George,
I was that stiff with the long ride and the cold that I nearly fell down.
He'd got a bit of a fire, so we lit our pipes and had a comfortable smoke.

`Well, Dick, you're back agin, I see,' he says, pretty pleasant for him.
`Glad to see you, Captain, once more. It's been lonesome work --
nobody but me and Jim and Warrigal, that's like a bear with a sore head
half his time. I'd a mind to roll into him once or twice,
and I should too only for his being your property like.'

`Thank you, Ben, I'll knock his head off myself as soon as we get settled
a bit. Warrigal's not a bad boy, but a good deal like a Rocky Mountain mule;
he's no good unless he's knocked down about once a month or so,
only he doesn't like any one but me to do it.'

`You'll see him about a mile on,' says father. `He told me he'd be behind
the big rock where the tree grows -- on the left of the road. He said
he'd get you a fresh horse, so as he could take Rainbow back to the Hollow
the long way round.'

Sure enough after we'd just got well on the road again Warrigal comes
quietly out from behind a big granite boulder and shows himself.
He was riding Bilbah, and leading a well-bred, good-looking chestnut.
He was one of the young ones out of the Hollow. He'd broken him
and got him quiet. I remembered when I was there first
spotting him as a yearling. I knew the blaze down his face
and his three white legs.

Warrigal jumps off Bilbah and throws down the bridle.
Then he leads the chestnut up to where Starlight was standing smoking,
and throws himself down at his feet, bursting out crying like a child.
He was just like a dog that had found his master again.
He kept looking up at Starlight just like a dog does, and smiling and going on
just as if he never expected to see such a good thing again
as long as he lived.

`Well, Warrigal,' says Starlight, very careless like,
`so you've brought me a horse, I see. You've been a very good boy.
Take Rainbow round the long way into the Hollow. Look after him,
whatever you do, or I'll murder you. Not that he's done, or anything near it;
but had enough for one ride, poor old man. Off with you!'
He changed the saddle, and Warrigal hopped on to Bilbah, and led off Rainbow,
who tossed his head, and trotted away as if he'd lots to spare,
and hadn't had twelve hours under saddle; best part without a halt or a bait.
I've seen a few good 'uns in my time, but I never saw the horse
that was a patch on Rainbow, take him all round.

We pushed on again, then, for ten miles, and somewhere about eight o'clock
we pulled up at home -- at home. Aileen knew we were coming, and ran out
to meet us. She threw her arms round me, and kissed and cried over me
for ever so long before she took any notice of Starlight,
who'd got down and was looking another way. `Oh! my boy, my boy,' she said,
`I never thought to see you again for years. How thin you've got and pale,
and strange looking. You're not like your old self at all.
But you're in the bush again now, by God's blessing.
We must hide you better next time. I declare I begin to feel quite wicked,
and as if I could fight the police myself.'

`Well spoken, Miss Marston,' said Starlight, just lifting his hat
and making a bit of a bow like, just as if she was a real lady;
but he was the same to all women. He treated them all alike
with the same respect of manner as if they were duchesses;
young or old, gentle or simple -- it made no odds to him.
`We must have your assistance if we're to do any good.
Though whether it wouldn't be more prudent on your part to cut us all dead,
beginning with your father, I shouldn't like to say.'

Aileen looked at him, surprised and angry like for a second. Then she says --

`Captain Starlight, it's too late now; but words can never tell
how I hate and despise the whole thing. My love for Dick
got the better of my reason for a bit, but I could ----
Why, how pale you look!'

He was growing pale, and no mistake. He had been ill for a bit
before he left Berrima, though he wouldn't give in, and the ride
was rather too much for him, I suppose. Anyhow, down he tumbles
in a dead faint. Aileen rushed over and lifted up his head.
I got some water and dabbed it over him. After a bit he came to.
He raises himself on his elbows and looks at Aileen.
Then he smiles quietly and says --

`I'm quite ashamed of myself. I'm growing as delicate as a young lady.
I hope I haven't given you much trouble.'

When he got up and walked to the verandah he quite staggered,
showing he was that weak as he could hardly walk without help.

`I shall be all right,' he said, `after a week's riding again.'

`And where are you going when you leave this place?' she asked.
`Surely you and my brothers never can live in New South Wales
after all that has passed.'

`We must try, at all events, Miss Marston,' Starlight answered,
raising up his head and looking proud. `You will hear something of us
before long.'

We made out that there was no great chance of our being run into
at the old place. Father went on first with Crib. He was sure
to give warning in some way, best known to father himself,
if there was any one about that wasn't the right sort.
So we went up and went in.

Mother was inside. I thought it was queer that she didn't come outside.
She was always quick enough about that when we came home before, day or night.
When I went in I could see, when she got up from her chair, that she was weak,
and looked as if she'd been ill. She looked ever so much older,
and her hair was a lot grayer than it used to be.

She held out her arms and clung round my neck as if I'd been raised
from the dead. So I was in a kind of a way. But she didn't say much,
or ask what I was going to do next. Poor soul! she knew it couldn't be
much good anyway; and that if we were hunted before, we'd be worse hunted now.
Those that hadn't heard of our little game with the Momberah cattle
would hear of our getting out of Berrima Gaol, which wasn't done every day.

We hadn't a deal of time to spare, because we meant to start off
for the Hollow that afternoon, and get there some time in the night,
even if it was late. Jim and dad knew the way in almost blindfold.
Once we got there we could sleep for a week if we liked,
and take it easy all roads. So father told mother and Aileen straight
that we'd come for a good comfortable meal and a rest,
and we must be off again.

`Oh! father, can't Dick and Jim stop for a day?' cries out Aileen.
`It does seem so hard when we haven't seen Dick for such a while;
and he shut up too all the time.'

`D'ye want to have us all took the same as last time?' growls father.
`Women's never contented as I can see. For two pins I wouldn't have
brought them this way at all. I don't want to be making roads
from this old crib to the Hollow, only I thought you'd like one look at Dick.'

`We must do what's best, of course,' said poor Aileen;
`but it's hard -- very hard on us. It's mother I'm thinking of, you know.
If you knew how she always wakes up in the night, and calls for Dick,
and cries when she wakes up, you'd try to comfort her a bit more, father.'

`Comfort her!' says dad; `why, what can I do? Don't I tell you
if we stay about here we're shopped as safe as anything ever was?
Will that comfort her, or you either? We're safe today
because I've got telegraphs on the outside that the police can't pass
without ringing the bell -- in a way of speaking. But you see to-morrow
there'll be more than one lot here, and I want to be clean away
before they come.'

`You know best,' says Aileen; `but suppose they come here to-morrow morning
at daylight, as they did last time, and bring a black tracker with them,
won't he be able to follow up your track when you go away to-night?'

`No, he won't; for this reason, we shall all ride different ways
as soon as we leave here. A good while before we get near the place
where we all meet we shall find Warrigal on the look-out.
He can take the Captain in by another track, and there'll be
only Jim and I and the old dog, the only three persons that'll go in
the near way.'

`And when shall we see -- see -- any of you again?'

`Somewheres about a month, I suppose, if we've luck. There's a deal
belongs to that. You'd better go and see what there is for us to eat.
We've a long way and a rough way to go before we get to the Hollow.'

Aileen was off at this, and then she set to work and laid a clean tablecloth
in the sitting-room and set us down our meal -- breakfast, or whatever it was.
It wasn't so bad -- corned beef, first-rate potatoes, fresh damper,
milk, butter, eggs. Tea, of course, it's the great drink in the bush;
and although some doctors say it's no good, what would bushmen do without it?

We had no intention of stopping the whole night, though we were tempted
to do so -- to have one night's rest in the old place where we used to sleep
so sound before. It was no good thinking of anything of that kind, anyhow,
for a good while to come. What we'd got to do was to look out sharp
and not be caught simple again like we was both last time.

After we had our tea we sat outside the verandah, and tried to make
the best of it. Jim stayed inside with mother for a good while;
she didn't leave her chair much now, and sat knitting by the hour together.
There was a great change come over her lately. She didn't seem
to be afraid of our getting caught as she used to be,
nor half as glad or sorry about anything. It seemed like as if
she'd made up her mind that everything was as bad as it could be,
and past mending. So it was; she was right enough there.
The only one who was in real good heart and spirits was Starlight.
He'd come round again, and talked and rattled away,
and made Aileen and Jim and me laugh, in spite of everything.
He said we had all fine times before us now for a year or two, any way.
That was a good long time. After that anything might happen.
What it would be he neither knew nor cared. Life was made up of short bits;
sometimes it was hard luck; sometimes everything went jolly and well.
We'd got our liberty again, our horses, and a place to go to,
where all the police in the country would never find us.
He was going in for a short life and a merry one. He, for one,
was tired of small adventures, and he was determined to make
the name of Starlight a little more famous before very long.
If Dick and Jim would take his advice -- the advice of a desperate,
ill-fated outcast, but still staunch to his friends -- they would clear out,
and leave him to sink or swim alone, or with such associates
as he might pick up, whose destination would be no great matter
whatever befell them. They could go into hiding for a while --
make for Queensland and then go into the northern territory.
There was new country enough there to hide all the fellows that were `wanted'
in New South Wales.

`But why don't you take your own advice?' said Aileen, looking over
at Starlight as he sat there quite careless and comfortable-looking,
as if he'd no call to trouble his head about anything. `Isn't your life
worth mending or saving? Why keep on this reckless miserable career
which you yourself expect to end ill?'

`If you ask me, Miss Marston,' he said, `whether my life
-- what is left of it -- is worth saving, I must distinctly answer
that it is not. It is like the last coin or two in the gambler's purse,
not worth troubling one's head about. It must be flung on the board
with the rest. It might land a reasonable stake. But as to economising
and arranging details that would surely be the greatest folly of all.'

I heard Aileen sigh to herself. She said nothing for a while;
and then old Crib began to growl. He got up and walked along the track
that led up the hill. Father stood up, too, and listened.
We all did except Starlight, who appeared to think it was too much trouble,
and never moved or seemed to notice.

Presently the dog came walking slowly back, and coiled himself up again
close to Starlight, as if he had made up his mind it didn't matter.
We could hear a horse coming along at a pretty good bat
over the hard, rocky, gravelly road. We could tell it was a single horse,
and more than that, a barefooted one, coming at a hand-gallop
up hill and down dale in a careless kind of manner. This wasn't likely
to be a police trooper. One man wouldn't come by himself
to a place like ours at night; and no trooper, if he did come,
would clatter along a hard track, making row enough to be heard
more than a mile off on a quiet night.

`It's all right,' says father. `The old dog knowed him; it's Billy the Boy.
There's something up.'

Just as he spoke we saw a horseman come in sight; and he rattled
down the stony track as hard as he could lick. He pulled up
just opposite the house, close by where we were standing.
It was a boy about fifteen, dressed in a ragged pair of moleskin trousers,
a good deal too large for him, but kept straight by a leather strap
round the waist. An old cabbage-tree hat and a blue serge shirt
made up the rest of his rig. Boots he had on, but they didn't seem
to be fellows, and one rusty spur. His hair was like a hay-coloured mop,
half-hanging over his eyes, which looked sharp enough to see
through a gum tree and out at the other side.

He jumped down and stood before us, while his horse's flanks
heaved up and down like a pair of bellows.

`Well, what's up?' says father.

`My word, governor, you was all in great luck as I come home last night,
after bein' away with them cattle to pound. Bobby, he don't know a p'leeceman
from a wood-an'-water joey; he'd never have dropped they was comin' here
unless they'd pasted up a notice on the door.'

`How did you find out, Billy?' says father, `and when'll they be here?'

`Fust thing in the morning,' says the young wit, grinning all over his face.
`Won't they be jolly well sold when they rides up and plants by the yard,
same as they did last time, when they took Dick.'

`Which ones was they?' asks father, fillin' his pipe quite business-like,
just as if he'd got days to spare.

`Them two fellers from Bargo; one of 'em's a new chum -- got his hair
cut short, just like Dick's. My word, I thought he'd been waggin' it
from some o' them Gov'ment institoosh'ns. I did raly, Dick, old man.'

`You're precious free and easy, my young friend,' says Starlight,
walking over. `I rather like you. You have a keen sense of humour,
evidently; but can't you say how you found out that the men
were her Majesty's police officers in pursuit of us?'

`You're Cap'n Starlight, I suppose,' says the youngster,
looking straight and square at him, and not a bit put out.
`Well, I've been pretty quick coming; thirty mile inside of three hours,
I'll be bound. I heard them talking about you. It was Starlight this
and Starlight that all the time I was going in and out of the room,
pretending to look for something, and mother scolding me.'

`Had they their uniform on?' I asked.

`No fear. They thought we didn't tumble, I expect; but I seen their horses
hung up outside, both shod all round; bits and irons bright.
Stabled horses, too, I could swear. Then the youngest chap
-- him with the old felt hat -- walked like this.'

Here he squared his shoulders, put his hands by his side,
and marched up and down, looking for all the world like one of them chaps
that played at soldiering in Bargo.

`There's no hiding the military air, you think, Billy?' said Starlight.
`That fellow was a recruit, and had been drilled lately.'