Robbery Under Arms

R >> Rolf Boldrewood >> Robbery Under Arms

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Some of our young stock used to stray among the squatters' cattle,
and we liked attending the muster because there was plenty of
galloping about and cutting out, and fun in the men's hut at night,
and often a half-crown or so for helping some one away
with a big mob of cattle or a lot for the pound. Father didn't go himself,
and I used to notice that whenever we came up and said we were
Ben Marston's boys both master and super looked rather glum, and then appeared
not to think any more about it. I heard the owner of one of these stations
say to his managing man, `Pity, isn't it? fine boys, too.'
I didn't understand what they meant. I do now.

We could do a few things besides riding, because, as I told you before,
we had been to a bit of a school kept by an old chap that had once seen
better days, that lived three miles off, near a little bush township.
This village, like most of these places, had a public-house
and a blacksmith's shop. That was about all. The publican kept the store,
and managed pretty well to get hold of all the money that was made
by the people round about, that is of those that were `good drinking men'.
He had half-a-dozen children, and, though he was not up to much,
he wasn't that bad that he didn't want his children to have the chance
of being better than himself. I've seen a good many crooked people in my day,
but very few that, though they'd given themselves up as a bad job,
didn't hope a bit that their youngsters mightn't take after them.
Curious, isn't it? But it is true, I can tell you. So Lammerby,
the publican, though he was a greedy, sly sort of fellow, that bought things
he knew were stolen, and lent out money and charged everybody two prices
for the things he sold 'em, didn't like the thought of his children
growing up like Myall cattle, as he said himself, and so he fished out this
old Mr. Howard, that had been a friend or a victim or some kind of pal of his
in old times, near Sydney, and got him to come and keep school.

He was a curious man, this Mr. Howard. What he had been or done
none of us ever knew, but he spoke up to one of the squatters
that said something sharp to him one day in a way that showed us boys
that he thought himself as good as he was. And he stood up straight
and looked him in the face, till we hardly could think he was the same man
that was so bent and shambling and broken-down-looking most times.
He used to live in a little hut in the township all by himself.
It was just big enough to hold him and us at our lessons.
He had his dinner at the inn, along with Mr. and Mrs. Lammerby.
She was always kind to him, and made him puddings and things when he was ill.
He was pretty often ill, and then he'd hear us our lessons at the bedside,
and make a short day of it.

Mostly he drank nothing but tea. He used to smoke a good deal
out of a big meerschaum pipe with figures on it that he used to show us
when he was in a good humour. But two or three times a year
he used to set-to and drink for a week, and then school was left off
till he was right. We didn't think much of that. Everybody, almost,
that we knew did the same -- all the men -- nearly all, that is --
and some of the women -- not mother, though; she wouldn't have touched
a drop of wine or spirits to save her life, and never did to her dying day.
We just thought of it as if they'd got a touch of fever or sunstroke,
or broke a rib or something. They'd get over it in a week or two,
and be all right again.

All the same, poor old Mr. Howard wasn't always on the booze,
not by any manner of means. He never touched a drop of anything,
not even ginger-beer, while he was straight, and he kept us all going
from nine o'clock in the morning till three in the afternoon,
summer and winter, for more than six years. Then he died, poor old chap --
found dead in his bed one morning. Many a basting he gave me and Jim
with an old malacca cane he had with a silver knob to it. We were all
pretty frightened of him. He'd say to me and Jim and the other boys,
`It's the best chance of making men of yourselves you ever had,
if you only knew it. You'll be rich farmers or settlers,
perhaps magistrates, one of these days -- that is, if you're not hanged.
It's you, I mean,' he'd say, pointing to me and Jim and the Dalys;
`I believe some of you WILL be hanged unless you change a good deal.
It's cold blood and bad blood that runs in your veins,
and you'll come to earn the wages of sin some day. It's a strange thing,'
he used to say, as if he was talking to himself, `that the girls are so good,
while the boys are delivered over to the Evil One, except a case
here and there. Look at Mary Darcy and Jane Lammerby,
and my little pet Aileen here. I defy any village in Britain
to turn out such girls -- plenty of rosy-cheeked gigglers --
but the natural refinement and intelligence of these little damsels
astonishes me.'

Well, the old man died suddenly, as I said, and we were all very sorry,
and the school was broken up. But he had taught us all
to write fairly and to keep accounts, to read and spell decently,
and to know a little geography. It wasn't a great deal,
but what we knew we knew well, and I often think of what he said,
now it's too late, we ought to have made better use of it.
After school broke up father said Jim and I knew quite as much
as was likely to be any good to us, and we must work for our living
like other people. We'd always done a pretty fair share of that,
and our hands were hard with using the axe and the spade,
let alone holding the plough at odd times and harrowing, helping father
to kill and brand, and a lot of other things, besides getting up
while the stars were in the sky so as to get the cows milked early,
before it was time to go to school.

All this time we had lived in a free kind of way -- we wanted for nothing.
We had plenty of good beef, and a calf now and then. About this time
I began to wonder how it was that so many cattle and horses
passed through father's hands, and what became of them.

I hadn't lived all my life on Rocky Creek, and among some of
the smartest hands in that line that old New South Wales ever bred,
without knowing what `clearskins' and `cross' beasts meant,
and being well aware that our brand was often put on a calf
that no cow of ours ever suckled. Don't I remember well the first calf
I ever helped to put our letters on? I've often wished I'd defied father,
then taken my licking, and bolted away from home. It's that very calf
and the things it led to that's helped to put me where I am!

Just as I sit here, and these cursed irons rattle whenever I move my feet,
I can see that very evening, and father and the old dog
with a little mob of our crawling cattle and half-a-dozen head of strangers,
cows and calves, and a fat little steer coming through the scrub
to the old stockyard.

It was an awkward place for a yard, people used to say; scrubby and stony
all round, a blind sort of hole -- you couldn't see till you were right
on the top of it. But there was a `wing' ran out a good way
through the scrub -- there's no better guide to a yard like that --
and there was a sort of track cattle followed easy enough once you were round
the hill. Anyhow, between father and the dog and the old mare he always rode,
very few beasts ever broke away.

These strange cattle had been driven a good way, I could see.
The cows and calves looked done up, and the steer's tongue was out --
it was hottish weather; the old dog had been `heeling' him up too,
for he was bleeding up to the hocks, and the end of his tail was bitten off.
He was a savage old wretch was Crib. Like all dogs that never bark
-- and men too -- his bite was all the worse.

`Go and get the brands -- confound you -- don't stand there
frightening the cattle,' says father, as the tired cattle,
after smelling and jostling a bit, rushed into the yard.
`You, Jim, make a fire, and look sharp about it. I want to brand
old Polly's calf and another or two.' Father came down to the hut
while the brands were getting ready, and began to look at the harness-cask,
which stood in a little back skillion. It was pretty empty;
we had been living on eggs, bacon, and bread and butter for a week.

`Oh, mother! there's such a pretty red calf in the yard,' I said,
`with a star and a white spot on the flank; and there's a yellow steer
fat enough to kill!'

`What!' said mother, turning round and looking at father with her eyes staring
-- a sort of dark blue they were -- people used to say mine and Jim's
were the same colour -- and her brown hair pushed back off her face,
as if she was looking at a ghost. `Is it doing that again you are,
after all you promised me, and you so nearly caught -- after the last one?
Didn't I go on my knees to ye to ask ye to drop it and lead a good life,
and didn't ye tell me ye'd never do the like again? And the poor
innocent children, too, I wonder ye've the heart to do it.'

It came into my head now to wonder why the sergeant and two policemen
had come down from Bargo, very early in the morning, about three months ago,
and asked father to show them the beef in his cask, and the hide
belonging to it. I wondered at the time the beast was killed
why father made the hide into a rope, and before he did that
had cut out the brand and dropped it into a hot fire. The police saw
a hide with our brand on, all right -- killed about a fortnight.
They didn't know it had been taken off a cancered bullock,
and that father took the trouble to `stick' him and bleed him
before he took the hide off, so as it shouldn't look dark.
Father certainly knew most things in the way of working on the cross.
I can see now he'd have made his money a deal easier, and no trouble of mind,
if he'd only chosen to go straight.

When mother said this, father looked at her for a bit
as if he was sorry for it; then he straightened himself up,
and an ugly look came into his face as he growled out --

`You mind your own business; we must live as well as other people.
There's squatters here that does as bad. They're just like
the squires at home; think a poor man hasn't a right to live.
You bring the brand and look alive, Dick, or I'll sharpen ye up a bit.'

The brand was in the corner, but mother got between me and it,
and stretched out her hand to father as if to stop me and him.

`In God's name,' she cried out, `aren't ye satisfied
with losing your own soul and bringing disgrace upon your family,
but ye must be the ruin of your innocent children?
Don't touch the brand, Dick!'

But father wasn't a man to be crossed, and what made it worse
he had a couple of glasses of bad grog in him. There was an old villain
of a shanty-keeper that lived on a back creek. He'd been there
as he came by and had a glass or two. He had a regular savage temper,
father had, though he was quiet enough and not bad to us when he was right.
But the grog always spoiled him.

He gave poor mother a shove which sent her reeling against the wall,
where she fell down and hit her head against the stool, and lay there.
Aileen, sitting down in the corner, turned white, and began to cry,
while father catches me a box on the ear which sends me kicking,
picks up the brand out of the corner, and walks out, with me after him.

I think if I'd been another year or so older I'd have struck back --
I felt that savage about poor mother that I could have gone at him myself --
but we had been too long used to do everything he told us; and somehow,
even if a chap's father's a bad one, he don't seem like other men to him.
So, as Jim had lighted the fire, we branded the little red heifer calf first
-- a fine fat six-months-old nugget she was -- and then three bull calves,
all strangers, and then Polly's calf, I suppose just for a blind.
Jim and I knew the four calves were all strangers, but we didn't know
the brands of the mothers; they all seemed different.

After this all was made right to kill a beast. The gallows was ready rigged
in a corner of the yard; father brought his gun and shot the yellow steer.
The calves were put into our calf-pen -- Polly's and all --
and all the cows turned out to go where they liked.

We helped father to skin and hang up the beast, and pretty late it was
when we finished. Mother had laid us out our tea and gone to bed with Aileen.
We had ours and then went to bed. Father sat outside and smoked
in the starlight. Hours after I woke up and heard mother crying.
Before daylight we were up again, and the steer was cut up and salted
and in the harness-cask soon after sunrise. His head and feet
were all popped into a big pot where we used to make soup for the pigs,
and by the time it had been boiling an hour or two there was no fear
of any one swearing to the yellow steer by `head-mark'.

We had a hearty breakfast off the `skirt', but mother wouldn't touch a bit,
nor let Aileen take any; she took nothing but a bit of bread and a cup of tea,
and sat there looking miserable and downcast. Father said nothing,
but sat very dark-looking, and ate his food as if nothing was the matter.
After breakfast he took his mare, the old dog followed; there was no need
to whistle for him -- it's my belief he knew more than many a Christian --
and away they went. Father didn't come home for a week --
he had got into the habit of staying away for days and days together.
Then things went on the old way.

Chapter 3

So the years went on -- slow enough they seemed to us sometimes --
the green winters, pretty cold, I tell you, with frost and hail-storms,
and the long hot summers. We were not called boys any longer, except by
mother and Aileen, but took our places among the men of the district.
We lived mostly at home, in the old way; sometimes working pretty hard,
sometimes doing very little. When the cows were milked and the wood chopped,
there was nothing to do for the rest of the day. The creek was that close
that mother used to go and dip the bucket into it herself, when she
wanted one, from a little wooden step above the clear reedy waterhole.

Now and then we used to dig in the garden. There was reaping and corn-pulling
and husking for part of the year; but often, for weeks at a time,
there was next to nothing to do. No hunting worth much --
we were sick of kangarooing, like the dogs themselves, that as they grew old
would run a little way and then pull up if a mob came, jump, jump, past them.
No shooting, except a few ducks and pigeons. Father used to laugh
at the shooting in this country, and say they'd never have poachers here --
the game wasn't worth it. No fishing, except an odd codfish,
in the deepest waterholes; and you might sit half a day without a bite.

Now this was very bad for us boys. Lads want plenty of work,
and a little play now and then to keep them straight. If there's none,
they'll make it; and you can't tell how far they'll go when they once start.

Well, Jim and I used to get our horses and ride off quietly in the afternoon,
as if we were going after cattle; but, in reality, as soon as we were
out of sight of mother, to ride over to that old villain,
Grimes, the shanty-keeper, where we met the young Dalys,
and others of the same sort -- talked a good deal of nonsense and gossip;
what was worse played at all-fours and euchre, which we had learned
from an American harvest hand, at one of the large farms.

Besides playing for money, which put us rather into trouble sometimes,
as we couldn't always find a half-crown if we lost it,
we learned another bad habit, and that was to drink spirits.
What burning nasty stuff I thought it at first; and so did we all!
But every one wanted to be thought a man, and up to all kinds of wickedness,
so we used to make it a point of drinking our nobbler, and sometimes
treating the others twice, if we had cash.

There was another family that lived a couple of miles off,
higher up the creek, and we had always been good friends with them,
though they never came to our house, and only we boys went to theirs.
They were the parents of the little girl that went to school with us,
and a boy who was a year older than me.

Their father had been a gardener at home, and he married a native girl
who was born somewhere about the Hawkesbury, near Windsor.
Her father had been a farmer, and many a time she told us how sorry she was
to go away from the old place, and what fine corn and pumpkins they grew;
and how they had a church at Windsor, and used to take
their hay and fruit and potatoes to Sydney, and what a grand place Sydney was,
with stone buildings called markets for people to sell
fruit and vegetables and poultry in; and how you could walk down
into Lower George Street and see Sydney Harbour, a great shining
salt-water plain, a thousand times as big as the biggest waterhole,
with ships and boats and sailors, and every kind of strange thing upon it.

Mrs. Storefield was pretty fond of talking, and she was always fond of me,
because once when she was out after the cows, and her man was away,
and she had left Grace at home, the little thing crawled down to the waterhole
and tumbled in. I happened to be riding up with a message for mother,
to borrow some soap, when I heard a little cry like a lamb's, and there was
poor little Gracey struggling in the water like a drowning kitten,
with her face under. Another minute or two would have finished her,
but I was off the old pony and into the water like a teal flapper.
I had her out in a second or two, and she gasped and cried a bit,
but soon came to, and when Mrs. Storefield came home she first cried over her
as if she would break her heart, and kissed her, and then she kissed me,
and said, `Now, Dick Marston, you look here. Your mother's a good woman,
though simple; your father I don't like, and I hear many stories about him
that makes me think the less we ought to see of the lot of you the better.
But you've saved my child's life to-day, and I'll be a friend
and a mother to you as long as I live, even if you turn out bad,
and I'm rather afraid you will -- you and Jim both --
but it won't be my fault for want of trying to keep you straight;
and John and I will be your kind and loving friends as long as we live,
no matter what happens.'

After that -- it was strange enough -- but I always took
to the little toddling thing that I'd pulled out of the water.
I wasn't very big myself, if it comes to that, and she seemed to have
a feeling about it, for she'd come to me every time I went there,
and sit on my knee and look at me with her big brown serious eyes
-- they were just the same after she grew up -- and talk to me
in her little childish lingo. I believe she knew all about it,
for she used to say, `Dick pull Gracey out of water;' and then she'd
throw her arms round my neck and kiss me, and walk off to her mother.
If I'd let her drown then, and tied a stone round my neck
and dropped through the reeds to the bottom of the big waterhole,
it would have been better for both of us.

When John came home he was nearly as bad as the old woman,
and wanted to give me a filly, but I wouldn't have it, boy as I was.
I never cared for money nor money's worth, and I was not going to be paid
for picking a kid out of the water.

George Storefield, Gracey's brother, was about my own age.
He thought a lot of what I'd done for her, and years afterwards
I threatened to punch his head if he said anything more about it.
He laughed, and held out his hand.

`You and I might have been better friends lately,' says he;
`but don't you forget you've got another brother besides Jim --
one that will stick to you, too, fair weather or foul.'

I always had a great belief in George, though we didn't get on over well,
and often had fallings out. He was too steady and hardworking altogether
for Jim and me. He worked all day and every day, and saved
every penny he made. Catch him gaffing! -- no, not for a sixpence.
He called the Dalys and Jacksons thieves and swindlers, who would be
locked up, or even hanged, some day, unless they mended themselves.
As for drinking a glass of grog, you might just as soon ask him
to take a little laudanum or arsenic.

`Why should I drink grog,' he used to say -- `such stuff, too, as you get
at that old villain Grimes's -- with a good appetite and a good conscience?
I'm afraid of no man; the police may come and live on my ground
for what I care. I work all day, have a read in the evening,
and sleep like a top when I turn in. What do I want more?'

`Oh, but you never see any life,' Jim said; `you're just like
an old working bullock that walks up to the yoke in the morning
and never stops hauling till he's let go at night. This is a free country,
and I don't think a fellow was born for that kind of thing and nothing else.'

`This country's like any other country, Jim,' George would say,
holding up his head, and looking straight at him with his steady gray eyes;
`a man must work and save when he's young if he don't want to be
a beggar or a slave when he's old. I believe in a man enjoying himself
as well as you do, but my notion of that is to have a good farm,
well stocked and paid for, by and by, and then to take it easy,
perhaps when my back is a little stiffer than it is now.'

`But a man must have a little fun when he is young,' I said.
`What's the use of having money when you're old and rusty,
and can't take pleasure in anything?'

`A man needn't be so very old at forty,' he says then,
`and twenty years' steady work will put all of us youngsters
well up the ladder. Besides, I don't call it fun getting half-drunk
with a lot of blackguards at a low pothouse or a shanty,
listening to the stupid talk and boasting lies of a pack of loafers and worse.
They're fit for nothing better; but you and Jim are. Now, look here,
I've got a small contract from Mr. Andrews for a lot of fencing stuff.
It will pay us wages and something over. If you like to go in with me,
we'll go share and share. I know what hands you both are
at splitting and fencing. What do you say?'

Jim, poor Jim, was inclined to take George's offer. He was that good-hearted
that a kind word would turn him any time. But I was put out
at his laying it down so about the Dalys and us shantying and gaffing,
and I do think now that some folks are born so as they can't do without
a taste of some sort of fun once in a way. I can't put it out clear,
but it ought to be fixed somehow for us chaps that haven't got
the gift of working all day and every day, but can do two days' work in one
when we like, that we should have our allowance of reasonable fun and pleasure
-- that is, what we called pleasure, not what somebody thinks
we ought to take pleasure in. Anyway, I turned on George rather rough,
and I says, `We're not good enough for the likes of you, Mr. Storefield.
It's very kind of you to think of us, but we'll take our own line
and you take yours.'

`I'm sorry for it, Dick, and more sorry that you take huff at an old friend.
All I want is to do you good, and act a friend's part. Good-bye --
some day you'll see it.'

`You're hard on George,' says Jim, `there's no pleasing you to-day;
one would think there were lots of chaps fighting how to give us a lift.
Good-bye, George, old man; I'm sorry we can't wire in with you;
we'd soon knock out those posts and rails on the ironbark range.'

`You'd better stop, Jim, and take a hand in the deal,' says I
(or, rather, the devil, for I believe he gets inside a chap at times),
`and then you and George can take a turn at local-preaching
when you're cut out. I'm off.' So without another word
I jumped on to my horse and went off down the hill, across the creek,
and over the boulders the other side, without much caring where I was going.
The fact was, I felt I had acted meanly in sneering at a man
who only said what he did for my good; and I wasn't at all sure
that I hadn't made a breach between Gracey and myself,
and, though I had such a temper when it was roused that all the world
wouldn't have stopped me, every time I thought of not seeing that girl again
made my heart ache as if it would burst.

I was nearly home before I heard the clatter of a horse's feet,
and Jim rode up alongside of me. He was just the same as ever,
with a smile on his face. You didn't often see it without one.

I knew he had come after me, and had given up his own fancy for mine.

`I thought you were going to stay and turn good,' I said. `Why didn't you?'

`It might have been better for me if I had,' he said,
`but you know very well, Dick, that whatever turns up,
whether it's for good or evil, you and I go together.'

We looked at one another for a moment. Our eyes met. We didn't say anything;
but we understood one another as well as if we had talked for a week.
We rode up to the door of our cottage without speaking. The sun had set,
and some of the stars had come out, early as it was, for it was late autumn.
Aileen was sitting on a bench in the verandah reading,
mother was working away as usual at something in the house.
Mother couldn't read or write, but you never caught her sitting
with her hands before her. Except when she was asleep I don't think
she ever was quite still.