Robbery Under Arms

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She'd thrown her arms round my neck and was sobbing on my shoulder
when she finished. I took her over to the sofa, and made her sit down
by the side of me.

`Kate,' I said, `this won't do. There's neither rhyme nor reason about it.
I'm as fond of you as ever I was, but you must know well enough
if you make a bolt of it now there'll be no end of a bobbery,
and everybody's thoughts will be turned our way. We'll be clean bowled --
the lot of us. Jim and I will be jugged. You and Jeanie will be left
to the mercy of the world, worse off by a precious sight than ever you were
in your lives. Now, if you look at it, what's the good of spoiling
the whole jimbang for a fancy notion about me? You and I are safe to be
first-rate friends always, but it will be the ruin of both of us if we're
fools enough to want to be more. You're living here like a regular queen.
You've got a good husband, that's proud of you and gives you everything
you can think of. You took him yourself, and you're bound to stick to him.
Besides, think of poor Jeanie and Jim. You'll spoil all their happiness;
and, more than all -- don't make any mistake -- you know what Jeanie thinks
of a woman who leaves her husband for another man.'

If you let a woman have a regular good cry and talk herself out,
you can mostly bring her round in the end. So after a bit
Kate grew more reasonable. That bit about Jeanie fetched her too.
She knew her own sister would turn against her -- not harsh like,
but she'd never be the same to her again as long as she lived.

The lamp had been put out in the big hall. There was only one
in this parlour, and it wasn't over bright. I talked away,
and last of all she came round to my way of thinking; at any rate
not to want to clear off from the old man now, but to wait till I came back,
or till I wrote to her.

`You are right, Dick,' she said at last, `and you show your sense
in talking the way you have; though, if you loved as I do,
you could not do it. But, once more, there's no other woman
that you're fonder of than me? It isn't that that makes you so good?
Dick Marston good!' and here she laughed bitterly. `If I thought that
I should go mad.'

What was I to do? I could not tell her that I loved Gracey Storefield
ten times as much as I'd ever cheated myself into thinking I cared about her.
So I swore that I cared more for her than any woman in the whole world,
and always had done so.

This steadied her. We parted good friends, and she promised
to keep quiet and try and make the best of things. She turned up the lamp
to show me the way out, though the outer door of the hall was left open
night and day. It was a way we had at the Turon; no one troubled themselves
to be particular about such trifles as furniture and so on.
There was very little small robbery there; it was not worth while.
All petty stealers were most severely punished into the bargain.

As I stood up to say good-bye a small note dropped out of my breast-pocket.
It had shifted somehow. Kate always had an eye like a hawk. With one spring
she pounced upon it, and before I could interfere opened and read it!
It was Gracey Storefield's. She stood for one moment and glared in my face.
I thought she had gone mad. Then she threw the bit of paper down
and trampled upon it, over and over again.

`So, Dick Marston,' she cried out hoarsely, her very voice changed,
`you have tricked me a second time! Your own Gracey! your own Gracey!
and this, by the date, at the very time you were letting me persuade myself,
like a fool, like an idiot that I was, that you still care for me!
You have put the cap to your villainy now. And, as God made me,
you shall have cause -- good cause -- to fear the woman you have once betrayed
and twice scorned. Look to yourself.'

She gazed at me for a moment with a face from which every trace of expression
had vanished, except that of the most devilish fury and spite --
the face of an evil spirit more than of a woman; and then she walked
slowly away. I couldn't help pitying her, though I cursed my own folly,
as I had done a thousand times, that I had ever turned my head
or spoken a word to her when first she crossed my path.
I got into the street somehow; I hardly knew what to think or to do.
That danger was close at our heels I didn't doubt for a moment.
Everything seemed changed in a minute. What was going to happen?
Was I the same Dick Marston that had been strolling up Main Street
a couple of hours ago? All but off by the to-morrow evening's coach,
and with all the world before me, a good round sum in the bank;
best part of a year's hard, honest work it was the price of, too.

Then all kinds of thoughts came into my head. Would Kate,
when her burst of rage was over, go in for revenge in cold blood?
She could hardly strike me without at the same time hurting Jeanie
through Jim. Should I trust her? Would she come right, kiss,
and make friends, and call herself a madwoman -- a reckless fool --
as she'd often done before? No; she was in bitter earnest this time.
It did not pay to be slack in making off. Once we had been caught napping,
and once was enough.

The first thing to do was to warn Jim -- poor old Jim, snoring away,
most like, and dreaming of taking the box-seat for himself and Jeanie
at the agent's next morning. It seemed cruel to wake him,
but it would have been crueller not to do so.

I walked up the narrow track that led up to the little gully
with the moon shining down upon the white quartz rock.
The pathway wound through a `blow' of it. I threw a pebble at the door
and waited till Jim came out.

`Who's there? Oh! it's you, old man, is it? It's rather late
for a call; but if you've come to spend the evening I'll get up,
and we'll have a smoke, anyhow.'

`You dress yourself, Jim,' I said, `as quick as you can.
Put on your hat and come with me; there's something up.'

`My God!' says Jim, `what is it? I'm a rank coward now I've got Jeanie.
Don't go and tell me we've got to cut and run again.'

`Something like it,' I said. `If it hasn't come to that yet,
it's not far off.'

We walked up the gully together. Jim lit his pipe while I told him shortly
what had happened to me with Kate.

`May the devil fly away with her!' said Jim savagely, `for a bad-minded,
bad-hearted jade; and then he'd wish he'd left her where she was.
She'd be no chop-down there even. I think sometimes
she can't be Jeanie's sister at all. They must have changed her,
and mothered the wrong child on the old woman. My word!
but it's no laughing matter. What's to be done?'

`There's no going away by the coach to-morrow, I'm afraid.
She's just the woman to tear straight up the camp and let it all out
before her temper cooled. It would take a week to do that.
The sergeant or Sir Ferdinand knows all about it now. They'll lose no time,
you may be certain.'

`And must I leave without saying good-night to Jeanie?' says Jim.
`No, by ----! If I have half-a-dozen bullets through me,
I'll go back and hold her in my arms once more before
I'm hunted off and through the country like a wild dog once more.
If that infernal Kate has given us away, by George, I could go and kill her
with my own hand! The cruel, murdering, selfish brute, I believe
she'd poison her mother for a ten-pound note!'

`No use swearing at Kate, Jim,' I said; `that won't mend matters.
It's not the first time by a thousand that I've wished I'd never
set eyes on her; but if I'd never seen her that day on St. Kilda beach
you'd never known Jeanie. So there's evens as well as odds. The thing is,
what are we to do now?'

`Dashed if I know. I feel stupid about tackling the bush again;
and what can I do with Jeanie? I wish I was dead. I've half a mind
to go and shoot that brute of a woman and then myself. But then, poor Jeanie!
poor little Jeanie! I can't stand it, Dick; I shall go mad!'

I thought Jim was going to break out crying just as he used when he was a boy.
His heart was a big soft one; and though he could face anything
in the way of work or fighting that a man dare do, and do two men's share
very like, yet his tears, mother said, laid very near his eyes,
and till he was a grown man they used to pump up on all sorts of occasions.

`Come, be a man, Jim,' I said, `we've got to look the thing in the face;
there's no two ways about it. I shall go to Arizona Bill's claim
and see what he says. Anyhow I'll leave word with him what to do
when we're gone. I'd advise you not to try to see Jeanie;
but if you will you must, I suppose. Good-bye, old man. I shall make my way
over to Jonathan's, borrow a horse from him, and make tracks for the Hollow
as soon as I can. You'd better leave Jeanie here and do the same.'

Jim groaned, but said nothing. He wrung my hands till the bones
seemed to crack, and walked away without a word. We knew it was a chance
whether we should meet again.

I walked on pretty quick till I came to the flat where
Arizona Bill and his mates had their sluicing claim.
There were six of them altogether, tall wiry men all of them;
they'd mostly been hunters and trappers in the Rocky Mountains
before the gold was struck at Suttor's Mill, in the Sacramento Valley.
They had been digging in '49 in California, but had come over
when they heard from an old mate of a placer diggings at Turon,
richer than anything they had ever tried in America.

This camp was half a mile from ours, and there was a bit
of broken ground between, so that I thought I was safe
in having a word with them before I cleared for Barnes's place,
though I took care not to go near our own camp hut. I walked over,
and was making straight for the smallest hut, when a rough voice hailed me.

`Hello! stranger, ye came darned near going to h--l with your boots on.
What did yer want agin that thar cabin?'

I saw then that in my hurry I had gone stumbling against a small hut
where they generally put their gold when the party had been washing up
and had more than was safe to start from camp with. In this they always put
a grizzled old hunter, about whom the yarn was that he never went to sleep,
and could shoot anything a mile off. It was thought a very unlikely thing
that any gold he watched would ever go crooked. Most people considered him
a deal safer caretaker than the escort.

`Oh! it's you, is it?' drawled Sacramento Joe. `Why, what's doin'
at yer old camp?'

`What about?' said I.

`Wal, Bill and I seen three or four half-baked vigilantes
that call themselves police; they was a setting round the hut
and looked as if they was awaiting for somebody.'

`Tell Bill I want him, Joe,' I said.

`Can't leave guard nohow,' says the true grit old hunter,
pointing to his revolver, and dodging up and down with his lame leg,
a crooked arm, and a seam in his face like a terrible wound there
some time or other. `I darsn't leave guard. You'll find him
in that centre tent, with the red flag on it.'

I lifted the canvas flap of the door and went in. Bill raised himself
in the bed and looked at me quite coolly.

`I was to your location a while since,' he said. `Met some friends of yours
there too. I didn't cotton to 'em muchly. Something has eventuated.
Is that so?'

`Yes. I want your help.' I told him shortly all I could tell him
in the time.

. . . . .

He listened quietly, and made no remark for a time.

`So ye hev' bin a road agent. You and Jim, that darned innocent old cuss,
robbing mails and cattle ranches. It is a real scoop up for me, you bet.
I'd heern of bush-ranging in Australia, but I never reckoned on their bein'
men like you and Jim. So the muchacha went back on yer -- snakes alive!
I kinder expected it. I reckon you're bound to git.'

`Yes, Bill, sharp's the word. I want you to draw my money and Jim's
out of the bank; it's all in my name. There's the deposit receipt.
I'll back it over to you. You give Jeanie what she wants,
and send the rest when I tell you. Will you do that for me, Bill?
I've always been on the square with you and your mates.'

`You hev', boy, that I'll not deny, and I'll corral the dollars for you.
It's an all-fired muss that men like you and Jim should have a black mark
agin your record. A spry hunter Jim would have made. I'd laid out
to have had him to Arizona yet -- and you're a going to dust out right away,
you say?'

`I'm off now. Jim's waited too long, I expect. One other thing;
let Mr. Haughton, across the creek, have this before daylight.'

`What, the Honourable!!! Lawful heart! Wal, I hope ye may strike
a better trail yet. Yer young, you and Jim, poor old Jim. Hold on.
Hev' ye nary shootin' iron?'

`No time,' I said. `I haven't been to the camp.'

`Go slow, then. Wait here; you'll want suthin, may be, on the peraira.
If ye do, boy! Jim made good shootin' with this, ye mind.
Take it and welcome; it'll mind ye of old Arizona Bill.'

He handed me a beautifully finished little repeating rifle,
hardly heavier than a navy revolver, and a small bag of cartridges.

`Thar, that'll be company for ye, in case ye hev to draw a bead
on the -- any one -- just temp'ry like. Our horses is hobbled
in Bates's clearing. Take my old sorrel if ye can catch him.'
He stopped for a second and put his hand in a listening fashion.
His hunter's ear was quicker than mine. `Thar's a war party on the trail,
I reckon. It's a roughish crossing at Slatey Bar,' and he pointed
towards the river, which we could plainly hear rushing over a rocky bed.
We shook hands, and as I turned down the steep river bank
I saw him walk slowly into his tent and close the canvas after him.

The line he pointed to was the one I fixed in my own mind to take
long before our talk was over. The Turon, always steep-banked,
rocky in places, ran here under an awful high bluff of slate rock.
The rushing water in its narrow channel had worn away the rock a good deal,
and left ledges or bars under which a deal of gold had been found.
Easy enough to cross here on a kind of natural ford. We had many a time
walked over on Sundays and holidays for a little kangaroo-shooting
now and then. It was here Jim one day, when we were all together
for a ramble, surprised the Americans by his shooting
with the little Ballard rifle.

As I crossed there was just moon enough to show the deep pools
and the hurrying, tearing waters of the wild river, foaming betwixt
the big boulders and jags of rock which the bar was strewed with.
In front the bank rose 300 feet like the roof of a house,
with great overhanging crags of slate rock, and a narrow track
in and out between. If I had light enough to find this and get to the top --
the country was terribly rough for a few miles, with the darkness coming on --
I should be pretty well out of reach by daylight.

I had just struck the track when I heard voices and a horse's tramp
on the other side of the river. They seemed not to be sure whether
I'd crossed or not, and were tracking up and down on each side of the bar.
I breasted the hill track faster than I had done for many a day,
and when I got to the top stopped to listen, but could hear nothing.
The moon had dropped suddenly; the forest was as black as pitch.
You couldn't see your hand before you.

I knew that I was safe now, if a hundred men were at my heels,
till daybreak at any rate. I had the two sides of the gully to guide me.
I could manage to make to the farm where the sorrel was at grass
with a lot of other diggers' horses. If I could get a saddle
and catch the old horse I could put many a mile between me and them
before sundown. I stood still when I reached the top of the bluff,
partly to get breath and partly to take a last look at old Turon.

Below lay the goldfield clearly marked out by hundreds of camp-fires
that were still red and showed bright in the darkened sky.
The course of the river was marked by them, in and out,
as most of the shallow diggings had followed the river flats.
Far back the fires glowed against the black forest,
and just before the moon fell I could catch the shine of the water
in the deeper reaches of the river.

It was the very picture of what I'd read about an army in camp --
lines of tents and a crowd of men all spread out over a bit of land
hardly big enough for a flock of sheep. Now and then a dog would bark --
now a revolver would go off. It was never quiet on Turon diggings,
day or night.

Well, there they all were, tents and diggers, claims and windlasses,
pumps and water-wheels. I had been happy enough there, God knows; and perhaps
I was looking at it all for the last time. As I turned and made
down the hill into the black forest that spread below me like the sea,
I felt as if I was leaving everything that was any good in life behind
with the Turon lights, and being hunted once more, in spite of myself,
into a desert of darkness and despair.

Chapter 31

I got to Bates's paddocks about daylight, and went straight up to the hut
where the man lived that looked after it. Most of the diggers that cared
about their horses paid for their grass in farmers' and squatters' paddocks,
though the price was pretty high. Old Bates, who had a bit
of a good grassed flat, made a pretty fair thing out of it
by taking in horses at half-a-crown a week apiece. As luck would have it,
the man in charge knew me; he'd seen me out with the Yankees one day,
and saw I was a friend with them, and when I said I'd come for Bill's sorrel
he thought it likely enough, and got out the saddle and bridle.
I tipped him well, and went off, telling him I was going to Wattle Flat
to look at a quartz-crushing plant that was for sale.
I accounted for coming up so early by saying I'd lost my road,
and that I wanted to get to Wattle Flat sharp, as another chap wished
to buy the plant. I cut across the range, kept the sun on my right hand,
and pushed on for Jonathan's. I got there early, and it's well I did.
I rode the sorrel hard, but I knew he was pretty tough,
and I was able to pay for him if I killed him. I trusted to leaving him
at Jonathan's, and getting a fresh horse there. What with the walk
over the bluff and the forest, having no sleep the night before,
and the bother and trouble of it all, I was pretty well used up.
I was real glad to see Jonathan's paddock fence and the old house
we'd thought so little of lately. It's wonderful how soon
people rise grand notions and begin to get too big for their boots.

`Hello, Dick, what's up?' says Jonathan. `No swag, 'lastic-side boots,
flyaway tie, new rifle, old horse; looks a bit fishy don't it?'

`I can't stop barneying,' I said. `Have you a decent horse to give me?
The game's up. I must ride night and day till I get home. Heard anything?'

`No; but Billy the Boy's just rode up. I hear him a-talkin' to the gals.
He knows if anybody does. I'll take the old moke and put him in the paddock.
I can let you have a stunner.'

`All right; I'll go in and have some breakfast. It's as much as I dare
stop at all now.'

`Why, Dick Marston, is that you? No, it can't be,' said both girls together.
`Why, you look like a ghost. He doesn't; he looks as if he'd been at a ball
all night. Plenty of partners, Dick?'

`Never mind, Dick,' says Maddie; `go and make yourself comfortable
in that room, and I'll have breakfast for you while you'd let a cow
out of the bail. We don't forget our friends.'

`If all our friends were as true as you, Maddie,' I said, rather down-like,
`I shouldn't be here to-day.'

`Oh! that's it, is it?' says she; `we're only indebted to somebody's
laying the traps on -- a woman of course -- for your honour's company.
Never mind, old man, I won't hit you when you're down. But, I say,
you go and have a yarn with Billy the Boy -- he's in the kitchen.
I believe the young imp knows something, but he won't let on to Bell and I.'

While the steaks were frying -- and they smelt very good, bad as I felt --
I called out Master Billy and had a talk with him. I handed him a note
to begin with. It was money well spent, and, you mark my words,
a shilling spent in grog often buys a man twenty times the worth of it
in information, let alone a pound.

Billy had grown a squarish-set, middle-sized chap; his hair wasn't so long,
and his clothes were better; his eye was as bright and bold-looking.
As he stood tapping one of his boots with his whip, he looked
for all the world like a bull-terrier.

`My colonial oath, Dick, you're quite the gentleman -- free with your money
just the same as ever. You takes after the old governor;
he always paid well if you told him the truth. I remember him
giving me a hidin' when I was a kiddy for saying something I wasn't sure of.
My word! I was that sore for a week after I couldn't button my shirt.
But ain't it a pity about Jim?'

`Oh, that's it. What about Jim?'

`Why, the p'leece grabbed him, of course. You fellers don't think you're
going on for ever and ever, keepin' the country in a state of terrorism,
as the papers say. No, Dick, it's wrong and wicked and sinful.
You'll have to knock under and give us young uns a chance.'

Here the impudent young rascal looked in my face as bold as brass
and burst out laughing. He certainly was the cheekiest young scoundrel
I ever came across. But in his own line you couldn't lick him.

`Jim's took,' he said, and he looked curiously over at me.
`I seen the p'leece a-takin' him across the country to Bargo
early this morning. There was poor old Jim a-lookin' as if
he was goin' to be hanged, with a chap leading the screw he was on,
and Jim's long legs tied underneath. I was gatherin' cattle, I was.
I drew some up just for a stall, and had a good look.'

`How many men were with him?'

`Only two; and they're to pass through Bargo Brush about sundown to-night,
or a bit earlier. I asked one of the men the road; said I'd lost myself,
and would be late home. Ha! ha! ha!'

And how the young villain laughed till the tears came into his eyes,
while he danced about like a blackfellow.

`See here, Billy,' I said, `here's another pound for you,
and there'll be a fiver after if you stick well to me to-day.
I won't let Jim be walked off to Berrima without a flutter to save him.
It'll be the death of him. He's not like me, and he's got
a young wife besides.'

`More fool he, Dick. What does a cross cove want with a wife?
He can't never expect to do any good with a wife follerin' of him about.
I'm agin marrying, leastways as long as a chap's sound on his pins.
But I'll stick to you, Dick, and, what's more, I can take you a short cut
to the brush, and we can wait in a gully and see the traps come up.
You have a snack and lie down for a bit. I seen you were done
when you came up. I'll have the horses ready saddled up.'

`How about the police? Suppose they come this way.'

`Not they. They split and took across towards the Mountain Hut,
where you all camped with the horses. I didn't see 'em;
but I cut their tracks. Five shod horses. They might be here to-morrow.'

A bush telegraph ain't a bad thing. They're not all as good as Billy the Boy.
But the worst of 'em, like a bad sheep dog, is a deal better than none.

A bush telegraph, you see, is mostly worked about the neighbourhood
he was born in. He's not much good anywhere else. He's like a blackfellow
outside of his own `tauri'. He's at sea. But within twenty or thirty miles
of where he was born and bred he knows every track, every range,
every hill, every creek, as well as all the short cuts and by-roads.
He can bring you miles shorter than any one that only follows the road.
He can mostly track like a blackfellow, and tell you whether
the cattle or horses which he sees the tracks of are belonging to his country
or are strangers. He can get you a fresh horse on a pinch, night or day,
for he knows everybody's paddocks and yards, as well as the number, looks,
pace, and pluck of everybody's riding horses -- of many of which
he has `taken a turn' out of -- that is, ridden them hard and far,
and returned them during the night. Of course he can be fined
-- even imprisoned for this -- when he is caught in the act.
Herein lies the difficulty. I felt like another man after a wash,
a nip, and a real good meal, with the two girls sitting close by,
and chattering away as usual.

`Do you know,' says Bella, `it half serves you right.
Not that that Port Phillip woman was right to peach. She ought to have had
her tongue torn out first, let alone go open-mouthed at it. But mightn't you
have come down here from the Turon on Sundays and holidays now and then,
and had a yarn with us all?'

`Of course we ought, and we deserve to be kicked -- the lot of us;
but there were good reasons why we didn't like to. We were regularly boxed up
with the diggers, nobody knew who we were, or where we came from,
and only for this Jezebel never would have known. If we'd come here
they'd have all dropped that we were old friends, and then they'd have known
all about us.'

`Well, I'm glad you've lost your characters,' says Maddie.
`You won't have to be so particular now, and you can come as often
as Sir Ferdinand will let you. Good-bye. Billy's waving his hat.'