Robbery Under Arms

R >> Rolf Boldrewood >> Robbery Under Arms

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`I d'no. Mother got 'em to stay, and began to talk quite innocent-like
of the bad characters there was in the country. Ha! ha! It was as good
as a play. Then they began to talk almost right out about Sergeant Goring
having been away on a wrong scent, and how wild he was,
and how he would be after Starlight's mob to-morrow morning at daylight,
and some p'leece was to meet him near Rocky Flat. They didn't say
they was the p'leece; that was about four o'clock, and getting dark.'

`How did you get the horse?' says Jim. `He's not one of yours, is he?'

`Not he,' says the boy; `I wish I had him or the likes of him. He belongs
to old Driver. I was just workin' it how I'd get out and catch our old moke
without these chaps being fly as I was going to talligrarph,
when mother says to me --

`"Have you fetched in the black cow?"

`We ain't got no black cow, but I knowed what she meant. I says --

`"No, I couldn't find her."

`"You catch old Johnny Smoker and look for her till you do find her,
if it's ten o'clock to-night," says mother, very fierce.
"Your father'll give you a fine larrupin' if he comes home
and there's that cow lost."

`So off I goes and mans old Johnny, and clears out straight for here.
When I came to Driver's I runs his horses up into a yard
nigh the angle of his outside paddock and collars this little 'oss,
and lets old Johnny go in hobbles. My word, this cove can scratch!'

`So it seems,' says Starlight; `here's a sovereign for you, youngster.
Keep your ears and eyes open; you'll always find that good information
brings a good price. I'd advise you to keep away from Mr. Marston, sen.,
and people of his sort, and stick to your work, if I thought there was
the least earthly chance of your doing so; but I see plainly
that you're not cut out for the industrious, steady-going line.'

`Not if I know it,' said the boy; `I want to see life before I die.
I'm not going to keep on milling and slaving day after day all the year round.
I'll cut it next year as sure as a gun. I say, won't you let me
ride a bit of the way with ye?'

`Not a yard,' says father, who was pretty cranky by this time;
`you go home again and put that horse where you got him. We don't want
old Driver tracking and swearing after us because you ride his horses;
and keep off the road as you go back.'

Billy the Boy nodded his head, and jumping into his saddle,
rode off again at much about the same pace he'd come at.
He was a regular reckless young devil, as bold as a two-year-old colt
in a branding-yard, that's ready to jump at anything and knock his brains out
against a stockyard post, just because he's never known
any real regular hurt or danger, and can't realise it.
He was terrible cruel to horses, and would ruin a horse in less time
than any man or boy I ever seen. I always thought from the first
that he'd come to a bad end. Howsoever, he was a wonderful chap
to track and ride; none could beat him at that; he was nearly
as good as Warrigal in the bush. He was as cunning as a pet dingo,
and would look as stupid before any one he didn't know,
or thought was too respectable, as if he was half an idiot.
But no one ever stirred within twenty or thirty miles of where he lived
without our hearing about it. Father fished him out,
having paid him pretty well for some small service, and ever after that
he said he could sleep in peace.

We had the horses up, ready saddled and fed, by sundown,
and as soon as the moon rose we made a start of it.
I had time for a bit of a talk with Aileen about the Storefields,
though I couldn't bring myself to say their names at first. I was right
in thinking that Gracey had seen me led away a prisoner by the police.
She came into the hut afterwards with Aileen, as soon as mother was better,
and the two girls sat down beside one another and cried their eyes out,
Aileen said.

George Storefield had been very good, and told Aileen that, whatever happened
to us or the old man, it would make no difference to him or to his feelings
towards her. She thanked him, but said she could never consent
to let him disgrace himself by marrying into a family like ours.
He had come over every now and then, and had seen they wanted for nothing
when father and Jim were away; but she always felt her heart growing colder
towards him and his prosperity while we were so low down in every way.
As for Gracey, she (Aileen) believed that she was in love with me
in a quiet, steady way of her own, without showing it much,
but that she would be true to me, if I asked her, to the end of the world,
and she was sure that she could never marry any one else as long as I lived.
She was that sort of girl. So didn't I think I ought to do everything I could
to get a better character, and try and be good enough for such a girl?
She knew girls pretty well. She didn't think there was such another girl
in the whole colony, and so on.

And when we went away where were we going to hide? I could not say
about particular distances, but I told her generally
that we'd keep out of harm's way, and be careful not to be caught.
We might see her and mother now and then, and by bush-telegraphs
and other people we could trust should be able to send news about ourselves.

`What's the Captain going to do?' she said suddenly.
`He doesn't look able to bear up against hardship like the rest of you.
What beautiful small hands he has, and his eyes are like sleeping fires.'

`Oh, he's a good deal stronger than he looks,' I said;
`he's the smartest of the lot of us, except it is dad,
and I've heard the old man say he must knock under to him.
But don't you bother your head about him; he's quite able
to take care of himself, and the less a girl like you thinks
about a man like him the better for her.'

`Oh, nonsense,' she said, at the same time looking down in a half-confused
sort of way. `I'm not likely to think about him or any one else just now;
but it seems such a dreadful thing to think a man like him,
so clever and daring, and so handsome and gentle in his ways,
should be obliged to lead such a life, hunted from place to place
like -- like ----'

`Like a bush-ranger, Ailie,' I said, `for that'll be the long and short of it.
You may as well know it now, we're going to "turn out".'

`You don't say that, Dick,' she said. `Oh! surely you will never be so mad.
Do you want to kill mother and me right out? If you do, why not take
a knife or an axe and do it at once? Her you've been killing all along.
As for me, I feel so miserable and degraded and despairing at times
that but for her I could go and drown myself in the creek
when I think of what the family is coming to.'

`What's the use of going on like that, Aileen?' I said roughly.
`If we're caught now, whatever we do, great or small,
we're safe for years and years in gaol. Mayn't we as well be hung for a sheep
as a lamb? What odds can it make? We'll only have bolder work
than duffing cattle and faking horse-brands like a lot of miserable crawlers
that are not game for anything more sporting.'

`I hear, I hear,' says sister, sitting down and putting her head
in her hands. `Surely the devil has power for a season
to possess himself of the souls of men, and do with them what he will.
I know how obstinate you are, Dick. Pray God you may not have
poor Jim's blood to answer for as well as your own before all is done.
Good-bye. I can't say God bless you, knowing what I do;
but may He turn your heart from all wicked ways, and keep you
from worse and deadlier evil than you have committed! Good-night.
Why, oh why, didn't we all die when we were little children!'

Chapter 22

I brought it out sudden-like to Aileen before I could stop myself,
but it was all true. How we were to make the first start we couldn't agree;
but we were bound to make another big touch, and this time the police
would be after us for something worth while. Anyhow, we could take it easy
at the Hollow for a bit, and settle all the ins and outs
without hurrying ourselves.

Our dart now was to get to the Hollow that night some time,
and not to leave much of a track either. Nobody had found out the place yet,
and wasn't going to if we knew. It was too useful a hiding-place
to give away without trouble, and we swore to take all sorts of good care
to keep it secret, if it was to be done by the art of man.

We went up Nulla Mountain the same way as we remembered doing
when Jim and I rode to meet father that time he had the lot of weaners.
We kept wide and didn't follow on after one another so as to make
a marked trail. It was a long, dark, dreary ride. We had to look sharp
so as not to get dragged off by a breast-high bough in the thick country.
There was no fetching a doctor if any one was hurt. Father rode ahead.
He knew the ins and outs of the road better than any of us,
though Jim, who had lived most of his time in the Hollow
after he got away from the police, was getting to know it pretty well.
We were obliged to go slow mostly -- for a good deal of the track
lay along the bed of a creek, full of boulders and rocks, that we had to cross
ever so many times in a mile. The sharp-edged rocks, too, overhung low enough
to knock your brains out if you didn't mind.

It was far into the night when we got to the old yard. There it stood,
just as I recollect seeing it the time Jim and I and father
branded the weaners. It had only been used once or twice since.
It was patched up a bit in places, but nobody seemed to have gone
next or nigh it for a long time. The grass had grown up round the sliprails;
it was as strange and forsaken-looking as if it belonged
to a deserted station.

As we rode up a man comes out from an angle of the fence and gives a whistle.
We knew, almost without looking, that it was Warrigal.
He'd come there to meet Starlight and take him round some other way.
Every track and short cut there was in the mountains was as easy to him
as the road to George Storefield's was to us. Nulla Mountain
was full of curious gullies and caves and places that the devil himself
could hardly have run a man to ground in, unless he'd lived near it
all his life as Warrigal had. He wasn't very free in showing them to us,
but he'd have made a bridge of his own body any time to let Starlight go safe.
So when they rode away together we knew he was safe whoever might be after us,
and that we should see him in the Hollow some time next day.

We went on for a mile or two farther; then we got off,
and turned our horses loose. The rest of the way we had to do on foot.
My horse and Jim's had got regularly broke into Rocky Flat,
and we knew that they'd go home as sure as possible, not quite straight,
but keeping somewhere in the right direction. As for father
he always used to keep a horse or two, trained to go home
when he'd done with him. The pony he rode to-night would just trot off,
and never put his nose to the ground almost till he got wind of home.

We humped our saddles and swags ourselves; a stiffish load too,
but the night was cool, and we did our best. It was no use growling.
It had to be done, and the sooner the better. It seemed a long time
-- following father step by step -- before we came to the place
where I thought the cattle were going to be driven over the precipice.
Here we pulled up for a bit and had a smoke. It was a queer time
and a queer look-out.

Three o'clock in the morning -- the stars in the sky, and it so clear
that we could see Nulla Mountain rising up against it a big black lump,
without sign of tree or rock; underneath the valley, one sea of mist,
and we just agoing to drop into it; on the other side of the Hollow,
the clear hill we called the Sugarloaf. Everything seemed dead,
silent, and solitary, and a rummier start than all, here were we --
three desperate men, driven to make ourselves a home in this lonesome,
God-forsaken place! I wasn't very fanciful by that time,
but if the devil had risen up to make a fourth amongst us
I shouldn't have been surprised. The place, the time, and the men
seemed regularly cut out for him and his mob.

We smoked our pipes out, and said nothing to each other, good or bad.
Then father makes a start, and we follows him; took a goodish while,
but we got down all right, and headed for the cave. When we got there
our troubles were over for a while. Jim struck a match and had a fire going
in no time; there was plenty of dry wood, of course. Then father rolls a keg
out of a hole in the wall; first-rate dark brandy it was,
and we felt a sight better for a good stiff nip all round.
When a man's cold and tired, and hungry, and down on his luck as well,
a good caulker of grog don't do him no harm to speak of.
It strings him up and puts him straight. If he's anything of a man
he can stand it, and feel all the better for it; but it's a precious sight
too easy a lesson to learn, and there's them that can't stop, once they begin,
till they've smothered what brains God Almighty put inside their skulls,
just as if they was to bore a hole and put gunpowder in.
No! they wouldn't stop if they were sure of going to heaven straight,
or to hell next minute if they put the last glass to their lips. I've heard
men say it, and knew they meant it. Not the worst sort of men, either.

We were none of us like that. Not then, anyhow. We could take or leave it,
and though dad could do with his share when it was going,
he always knew what he was about, and could put the peg in any time.
So we had one strongish tot while the tea was boiling.
There was a bag of ship biscuit; we fried some hung beef,
and made a jolly good supper. We were that tired we didn't care to talk much,
so we made up the fire last thing and rolled ourselves in our blankets;
I didn't wake till the sun had been up an hour or more.

I woke first; Jim was fast asleep, but dad had been up a goodish while
and got things ready for breakfast. It was a fine, clear morning;
everything looked beautiful, 'specially to me that had been locked up
away from this sort of thing so long. The grass was thick and green
round the cave, and right up to the big sandstone slabs of the floor,
looking as if it had never been eat down very close. No more it had.
It would never have paid to have overstocked the Hollow.
What cattle and horses they kept there had a fine time of it,
and were always in grand condition.

Opposite where we were the valley was narrow. I could see
the sandstone precipices that walled us in, a sort of yellowish, white colour,
all lighted up with the rays of the morning sun, looking like gold towers
against the heavy green forest timber at the foot of them.
Birds were calling and whistling, and there was a little spring
that fell drip, drip over a rough rock basin all covered with ferns.
A little mob of horses had fed pretty close up to the camp,
and would walk up to look curious-like, and then trot off
with their heads and tails up. It was a pretty enough sight that met my eyes
on waking. It made me feel a sort of false happiness for a time,
to think we had such a place to camp in on the quiet, and call our own,
in a manner of speaking.

Jim soon woke up and stretched himself. Then father began,
quite cheerful like --

`Well, boys, what d'ye think of the Hollow again? It's not a bad earth
for the old dog-fox and his cubs when the hounds have run him close.
They can't dig him out here, or smoke him out either. We've no call
to do anything but rest ourselves for a week or two, anyhow;
then we must settle on something and buckle to it more business-like.
We've been too helter-skelter lately, Jim and I. We was beginning
to run risks, got nearly dropped on more nor once.'

There's no mistake, it's a grand thing to wake up and know you've got
nothing to do for a bit but to take it easy and enjoy yourself. No matter
how light your work may be, if it's regular and has to be done every day,
the harness 'll gall somewhere; you get tired in time and sick of
the whole thing.

Jim and I knew well that, bar accidents, we were as safe in the Hollow
as we used to be in our beds when we were boys. We'd searched it
through and through last time, till we'd come to believe
that only three or four people, and those sometimes not for years at a time,
had ever been inside of it. There were no tracks of more.

We could see how the first gang levied; they were different.
Every now and then they had a big drink -- `a mad carouse',
as the books say -- when they must have done wild, strange things,
something like the Spanish Main buccaneers we'd read about.
They'd brought captives with them, too. We saw graves, half-a-dozen together,
in one place. THEY didn't belong to the band.

We had a quiet, comfortable meal, and a smoke afterwards.
Then Jim and I took a long walk through the Hollow, so as to tell one another
what was in our minds, which we hadn't a chance to do before.
Before we'd gone far Jim pulls a letter out of his pocket and gives it to me.

`It was no use sending it to you, old man, while you was in the jug,' he says;
`it was quite bad enough without this, so I thought I'd keep it
till we were settled a bit like. Now we're going to set up in business
on our own account you'd best look over your mail.'

I knew the writing well, though I hadn't seen it lately. It was from her --
from Kate Morrison that was. It began -- not the way most women write,
like HER, though --

So this is the end of your high and mighty doings, Richard Marston,
passing yourself and Jim off as squatters. I don't blame him --
[no, of course not, nobody ever blamed Jim, or would, I suppose,
if he'd burned down Government House and stuck up his Excellency
as he was coming out of church] -- but when I saw in the papers
that you had been arrested for cattle-stealing I knew for the first time
how completely Jeanie and I had been duped.

I won't pretend that I didn't think of the money you were said to have,
and how pleasant it would be to spend some of it after the miserable,
scrambling, skimping life we had lately been used to. But I loved you,
Dick Marston, for YOURSELF, with a deep and passionate love
which you will never know now, which you would scorn and treat lightly,
perhaps, if you did know. You may yet find out what you have lost,
if ever you get out of that frightful gaol.

I was not such a silly fool as to pine and fret over our romance
so cruelly disturbed, though Jeanie was; it nearly broke her heart.
No, Richard, my nature is not of that make. I generally get even
with people who wrong me. I send you a photo, giving a fair idea
of myself and my HUSBAND, Mr. Mullockson. I accepted his offer
soon after I saw your adventures, and those of your friend Starlight,
in every newspaper in the colonies. I did not hold myself bound
to live single for your sake, so did what most women do,
though they pretend to act from other motives, I disposed of myself
to the best advantage.

Mr. Mullockson has plenty of money, which is NEARLY everything
in this world, so that I am comfortable and well off, as far as that goes.
If I am not happy that is your fault -- your fault, I say,
because I am not able to tear your false image and false self
from my thoughts. Whatever happens to me in the future you may consider
yourself to blame for. I should have been a happy and fairly good woman,
as far as women go, if you had been true, or rather if everything about you
had not been utterly false and despicable.

You think it fortunate after reading this, I daresay,
that we are separated for ever, BUT WE MAY MEET AGAIN, Richard Marston.
THEN you may have reason to curse the day, as I do most heartily,
when you first set eyes on
KATE MULLOCKSON.

Not a pleasant letter, by no manner of means. I was glad I didn't get it
while I was eating my heart out under the stifling low roof of the cell
at Nomah, or when I was bearing my load at Berrima. A few pounds more
when the weight was all I could bear and live would have crushed the heart
out of me. I didn't want anything to cross me when I was looking
at mother and Aileen and thinking how, between us, we'd done everything
our worst enemy could have wished us to do. But here, when there was
plenty of time to think over old days and plan for the future, I could bear
the savage, spiteful sound of the whole letter and laugh at the way
she had got out of her troubles by taking up with a rough old fellow
whose cheque-book was the only decent thing about him. I wasn't sorry
to be rid of her either. Since I'd seen Gracey Storefield again
every other woman seemed disagreeable to me. I tore up the letter
and threw it away, hoping I had done for ever with a woman that no man living
would ever have been the better for.

`Glad you take it so quiet,' Jim says, after holding his tongue
longer than he did mostly. `She's a bad, cold-hearted jade,
though she is Jeanie's sister. If I thought my girl was like her
she'd never have another thought from me, but she isn't, and never was.
The worse luck I've had the closer she's stuck to me,
like a little brick as she is. I'd give all I ever had in the world
if I could go to her and say, "Here I am, Jim Marston,
without a penny in the world, but I can look every man in the face,
and we'll work our way along the road of life cheerful and loving together."
But I CAN'T say it, Dick, that's the devil of it, and it makes me
so wild sometimes that I could knock my brains out against
the first ironbark tree I come across.'

I didn't say anything, but I took hold of Jim's hand and shook it.
We looked in each other's eyes for a minute; there was no call
to say anything. We always understood one another, Jim and I.

As we were safe to stop in the Hollow for long spells at a time
we took a good look over it, as far as we could do on foot.
We found a rum sort of place at the end of a long gully that went easterly
from the main flat. In one way you'd think the whole valley had been
an arm of the sea some time or other. It was a bit like Sydney Harbour
in shape, with one principal valley and no end of small cover and gullies
running off from it, and winding about in all directions.
Even the sandstone walls, by which the whole affair, great and small,
was hemmed in, were just like the cliff about South Head;
there were lines, too, on the face of them, Jim and I made out,
just like where the waves had washed marks and levels on the sea-rock.
We didn't trouble ourselves much about that part of it.
Whatever might have been there once, it grew stunning fine grass now,
and there was beautiful clear fresh water in all the creeks
that ran through it.

Well, we rambled up the long, crooked gully that I was talking about
till about half-way up it got that narrow that it seemed stopped by a big rock
that had tumbled down from the top and blocked the path. It was pretty well
grown over with wild raspberries and climbers.

`No use going farther,' says Jim; `there's nothing to see.'

`I don't know that. Been a track here some time. Let's get round and see.'

When we got round the rock the track was plain again; it had been
well worn once, though neither foot nor hoof much had been along it
for many a year. It takes a good while to wear out a track in a dry country.

The gully widened out bit by bit, till at last we came
to a little round green flat, right under the rock walls
which rose up a couple of thousand feet above it on two sides.
On the flat was an old hut -- very old it seemed to be,
but not in bad trim for all that. The roof was of shingles,
split, thick, and wedge shaped; the walls of heavy ironbark slabs,
and there was a stone chimney.

Outside had been a garden; a few rose trees were standing yet,
ragged and stunted. The wallabies had trimmed them pretty well,
but we knew what they were. Been a corn-patch too -- the marks
where it had been hoed up were there, same as they used to do
in old times when there were more hoes than ploughs and more convicts
than horses and working bullocks in the country.

`Well, this is a rum start,' says Jim, as we sat down on a log outside
that looked as if it had been used for a seat before. `Who the deuce
ever built this gunyah and lived in it by himself for years and years?
You can see it was no two or three months' time he done here.
There's the spring coming out of the rock he dipped his water from.
The track's reg'lar worn smooth over the stones leading to it.
There was a fence round this garden, some of the rails lying there
rotten enough, but it takes time for sound hard wood to rot.
He'd a stool and table too, not bad ones either, this Robinson Crusoe cove.
No end of manavilins either. I wonder whether he come here
before them first -- Government men -- chaps we heard of.
Likely he did and died here too. He might have chummed in with them,
of course, or he might not. Perhaps Starlight knows something about him,
or Warrigal. We'll ask them.'

We fossicked about for a while to see if the man who lived so long by himself
in this lonely place had left anything behind him to help us make out
what sort he was. We didn't find much. There was writing on the walls
here and there, and things cut on the fireplace posts. Jim couldn't make
head or tail of them, nor me either.