Robbery Under Arms

R >> Rolf Boldrewood >> Robbery Under Arms

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`With characteristic celerity, however, the famous outlaw had shortly before
quitted the place, having received warning and been provided with a fast horse
by his singular retainer, Warrigal, a half-caste native of the colony,
who is said to be devotedly attached to him, and who has been seen
from time to time on the Turon.

`Of the Marston brothers, the elder one, Richard, would seem to have been
similarly apprised, but James Marston was arrested in his cottage
in Specimen Gully. Having been lately married, he was apparently unwilling
to leave his home, and lingered too long for prudence.

`While rejoicing, as must all good citizens, at the discovery of evil-doers
and the capture of one member of a band of notorious criminals, we must state
in fairness and candour that their conduct has been, while on the field
as miners, free from reproach in every way. For James Marston,
who was married but a short while since to a Melbourne young lady
of high personal attractions and the most winning amiability,
great sympathy has been expressed by all classes.

So much for the "Star". Everybody is sorry for you, old man,' he says to Jim.
`I shouldn't wonder if they'd make you a beak if you'd stayed there
long enough. I'm afraid Dick's dropping the policeman won't add
to our popularity, though.'

`He's all right,' I said. `Hurrah! look here. I'm glad I didn't finish
the poor beggar. Listen to this, from the "Turon Banner": --

`BUSH-RANGING REVIVED.

`The good old days have apparently not passed away for ever,
when mail robberies and hand-to-hand conflicts with armed robbers
were matters of weekly occurrence. The comparative lull
observable in such exciting occurrences of late has been proved to be
but the ominous hush of the elements that precedes the tempest.
Within the last few days the mining community has been startled
by the discovery of the notorious gang of bush-rangers,
Starlight and the Marstons, domiciled in the very heart of the diggings,
attired as ordinary miners, and -- for their own purposes possibly --
leading the laborious lives proper to the avocation. They have been
fairly successful, and as miners, it is said, have shown themselves
to be manly and fair-dealing men. We are not among those who care
to judge their fellow-men harshly. It may be that they had resolved
to forsake the criminal practices which had rendered them
so unhappily celebrated. James Marston had recently married
a young person of most respectable family and prepossessing appearance.
As far as may be inferred from this step and his subsequent conduct,
he had cut loose from his former habitudes. He, with his brother,
Richard Marston, worked an adjoining claim to the Arizona Sluicing Company,
with the respected shareholders of which they were on terms of intimacy.
The well-known Starlight, as Mr. Frank Haughton, became partner and tent-mate
with the Hon. Mr. Clifford and Mr. Hastings, an aristocratic society in which
the manners and bearing of this extraordinary man permitted him to mingle
without suspicion of detection.

`Suddenly information was furnished to the police respecting all three men.
We are not at present aware of the source from which the clue was obtained.
Suffice it to say that Sir Ferdinand Morringer promptly arranged for
the simultaneous action of three parties of police with the hope of capturing
all three outlaws. But in two cases the birds were flown.
Starlight's "ame damnee", a half-caste named Warrigal, had been
observed on the field the day before. By him he was doubtless furnished
with a warning, and the horse upon which he left his abode shortly before
the arrival of Sir Ferdinand. The elder Marston had also eluded the police.
But James Marston, hindered possibly by domestic ties, was captured
at his cottage at Specimen Gully. For him sympathy has been
universally expressed. He is regarded rather as a victim
than as an active agent in the many criminal offences
chargeable to the account of Starlight's gang.

`Since writing the above we have been informed that trooper Walsh,
who with another constable was escorting James Marston to Bargo Gaol,
has been brought in badly wounded. The other trooper reports
that he was shot down and the party attacked by persons concealed
in the thick timber near Wild Horse Creek, at the edge of Bargo Brush.
In the confusion that ensued the prisoner escaped. It was at first thought
that Walsh was fatally injured, but our latest report
gives good hope of his recovery.

`We shall be agreeably surprised if this be the end and not the commencement
of a series of darker tragedies.'

Chapter 33

A month's loafing in the Hollow. Nothing doing and nothing to think of
except what was miserable enough, God knows. Then things began
to shape themselves, in a manner of speaking. We didn't talk much together;
but each man could see plain enough what the others was thinking of.
Dad growled out a word now and then, and Warrigal would look at us
from time to time with a flash in his hawk's eyes that we'd seen
once or twice before and knew the meaning of. As for Jim, we were bound to do
something or other, if it was only to keep him from going melancholy mad.
I never seen any man changed more from what he used to be than Jim did.
He that was the most careless, happy-go-lucky chap that ever stepped,
always in a good temper and full of his larks. At the end of the hottest day
in summer on the plains, with no water handy, or the middle of
the coldest winter night in an ironbark forest, and we sitting on our horses
waiting for daylight, with the rain pouring down our backs, not game
to light a fire, and our hands that cold we could hardly hold the reins,
it was all one to Jim. Always jolly, always ready to make little of it all.
Always ready to laugh or chaff or go on with monkey tricks like a boy.
Now it was all the other way with him. He'd sit grizzling and smoking
by himself all day long. No getting a word out of him. The only time
he seemed to brighten up was once when he got a letter from Jeanie.
He took it away into the bush and stayed hours and hours.

From never thinking about anything or caring what came uppermost,
he seemed to have changed all on the other tack and do nothing but think.
I'd seen a chap in Berrima something like him for a month or two;
one day he manned the barber's razor and cut his throat. I began to be afraid
Jim would go off his head and blow his brains out with his own revolver.
Starlight himself got to be cranky and restless-like too.
One night he broke out as we were standing smoking under a tree,
a mile or so from the cave --

`By all the devils, Dick, I can't stand this sort of thing much longer.
We shall go mad or drink ourselves to death' -- (we'd all been
pretty well `on' the night before) -- `if we stick here
till we're trapped or smoked out like a 'guana out of a tree spout.
We must make a rise somehow, and try for blue water again.
I've been fighting against the notion the whole time we've been here,
but the devil and your old dad (who's a near relative, I believe)
have been too strong for us. Of course, you know what it's bound to be?'

`I suppose so. I know when dad was away last week he saw that beggar
and some of his mates. They partly made it up awhile back,
but didn't fancy doing it altogether by themselves. They've been waiting
on the chance of our standing in and your taking command.'

`Of course, the old story,' he says, throwing his cigar away,
and giving a half laugh -- such a laugh it was, too.
`Captain Starlight again, I suppose. The paltry vanity of leadership,
and of being in the front of my fellow-men, has been the ruin of me
ever since I could recollect. If my people had let me go into the army,
as I begged and prayed of them to do, it might have been all the other way.
I recollect that day and hour when my old governor refused my boyish petition,
laughed at me -- sneered at me. I took the wrong road then.
I swear to you, Dick, I never had thought of evil till that cursed day
which made me reckless and indifferent to everything. And this is the end --
a wasted life, a felon's doom! Quite melodramatic, isn't it, Richard?
Well, we'll play out the last act with spirit. "Enter first robber,"
and so on. Good-night.'

He walked away. I never heard him say so much about himself before.
It set me thinking of what luck and chance there seemed to be in this world.
How men were not let do what they knew was best for 'em -- often and often --
but something seemed to drive 'em farther and farther along the wrong road,
like a lot of stray wild cattle that wants to make back to their own run,
and a dog here, a fence the other way. A man on foot or a flock of sheep
always keeps frightening 'em farther and farther from the old beat till they
get back into a bit of back country or mallee scrub and stop there for good.
Cattle and horses and men and women are awful like one another in their ways,
and the more you watch 'em the more it strikes you.

Another day or two idling and card-playing, another headache
after too much grog at night, brought us to a regular go in about business,
and then we fixed it for good.

We were to stick up the next monthly gold escort. That was all.
We knew it would be a heavy one and trusted to our luck to get clear off
with the gold, and then take a ship for Honolulu or San Francisco.
A desperate chance; but we were desperate men. We had tried to work
hard and honest. We had done so for best part of a year.
No one could say we had taken the value of a halfpenny from any man.
And yet we were not let stay right when we asked for nothing
but to be let alone and live out the rest of our lives like men.

They wouldn't have us that way, and now they must take us across the grain,
and see what they would gain by that. So it happened we went out one day
with Warrigal to show us the way, and after riding for hours and hours,
we came to a thick scrub. We rode through it till we came to
an old cattle track. We followed that till we came to a tumble-down slab hut
with a stockyard beside it. The yard had been mended, and the rails were up.
Seven or eight horses were inside, all in good condition. As many men
were sitting or standing about smoking outside the old hut.

When we rode up they all came forward and we had it out.
We knew who was coming, and were ready for 'em. There was Moran, of course,
quiet and savage-looking, just as like a black snake as ever
twisting about with his deadly glittering eyes, wanting to bite some one.
There was Daly and Burke, Wall and Hulbert, and two or three more
-- I won't say who they were now -- and if you please
who should come out of the hut last but Master Billy the Boy,
as impudent as you like, with a pipe in his mouth, and a revolver in his belt,
trying to copy Moran and Daly. I felt sorry when I see him, and thought
what he'd gradually come to bit by bit, and where he'd most likely end,
all along of the first money he had from father for telegraphing.
But after all I've a notion that men and women grow up as they are
intended to from the beginning. All the same as a tree from seed.
You may twist it this road or that, make it a bit bigger or smaller
according to the soil or the way it's pruned and cut down when it's young,
but you won't alter the nature of that tree or the fruit that it bears.
You won't turn a five-corner into a quince, or a geebung into an orange,
twist and twine, and dig and water as you like. So whichever way
Billy the Boy had been broken and named he'd have bolted and run
off the course. Take a pet dingo now. He might look very tame, and follow
them that feed him, and stand the chain; but as soon as anything passed close
that he could kill, he'd have his teeth into it and be lapping its blood
before you could say knife, and the older he got the worse he'd be.

`Well, Dick,' says this young limb of Satan, `so you've took
to the Queen's highway agin, as the chap says in the play. I thought
you and Jim was a-going to jine the Methodies or the Sons of Temperance
at Turon, you both got to look so thunderin' square on it. Poor old Jim
looks dreadful down in the mouth, don't he, though?'

`It would be all the better for you if you'd joined some other body,
you young scamp,' I said. `Who told you to come here? I've half a mind
to belt you home again to your mother;' and I walked towards him.

`No, you won't, Dick Marston, don't you make any mistake,'
says the young bull-pup, looking nasty. `I'm as good a man as you,
with this little tool.' Here he pulled out his revolver.
`I've as much right to turn out as you have. What odds is it to you
what I do?'

I looked rather foolish at this, and Moran and Burke began to laugh.

`You'd better set up a night-school, Dick,' says Burke,
`and get Billy and some of the other flash kiddies to come.
They might turn over a new leaf in time.'

`If you'll stand up, or Moran there, that's grinning behind you,
I'll make some of ye laugh on the wrong side,' I said.

`Come on,' drawls Moran, taking off his coat, and walking up;
`I'd like to have a smack at you before you go into the Church.'

We should have been at it hammer and tongs -- we both hated one another
like poison -- only the others interfered, and Billy said
we ought to be ashamed of ourselves for quarrelling like schoolboys.
We were nice sort of chaps to stick up a gold escort. That made a laugh,
and we knocked off.

Well, it looked as if no one wanted to speak. Then Hulbert,
a very quiet chap, says, `I believe Ben Marston's the oldest man here;
let's hear what he's got to say.'

Father gets up at once, and looks steady at the rest of 'em,
takes his pipe out of his mouth, and shakes the baccy out. Then he says --

`All on ye knows without my telling what we've come here about,
and what there's hangin' to it. It's good enough if it's done to rights;
but make no mistake, boys, it's a battle as must be fought game,
and right back to the ropes, or not at all. If there's a bird here
that won't stand the steel he'd better be put in a bag and took home again.'

`Never mind about the steel, daddy,' says one of the new men.
`We're all good for a flutter when the wager's good.
What'll it be worth a man, and where are we going to divide?
We know your mob's got some crib up in the mountains that no one knows about.
We don't want the swag took there and planted. It mightn't be found easy.'

`Did ever a one of ye heer tell o' me actin' crooked?' says father.
`Look here, Bill, I'm not as young as I was, but you stand up to me
for three rounds and I'll take some of the cheek out of yer.'

Bill laughed.

`No fear, daddy, I'd sooner face Dick or Jim. But I only want what's fair
between man and man. It's a big touch, you know, and we can't take it
to the bank to divide, like diggers, or summons yer either.'

`What's the good of growlin' and snappin'?' says Burke.
`We're all goin' in regular, I suppose, share and share alike?'
The men nodded. `Well, there's only one way to make things shipshape,
and that's to have a captain. We'll pick one of ourselves,
and whatever he says we'll bind ourselves to do -- life or death.
Is that it, boys?'

`Yes, yes, that's the only way,' came from all hands.

`Now, the next thing to work is who we're to make captain of.
There's one here as we can all depend on, who knows more about road-work
than all the rest of us put together. You know who I mean;
but I don't want ye to choose him or any man because I tell you. I propose
Starlight for captain if he'll take it, and them that don't believe me
let 'em find a better man if they can.'

`I vote for Dan Moran,' says another man, a youngish farmer-looking chap.
`He's a bushman, like ourselves, and not a half-bred swell,
that's just as likely to clear out when we want him most as do anything else.'

`You go back to the Springs and feed them pigs, Johnny,' says father,
walking towards the young chap. `That's about what YOU'RE bred for;
nobody'll take you for a swell, quarter-bred, or anything else.
Howsoever, let's draw lots for it. Every man put his fancy down
on a bit of paper, and put 'em into my old hat here.'

This was done after a bit, and the end of it was ten votes for Starlight
and two or three for Moran, who looked savage and sulkier than ever.

When this was over Starlight walked over from where he was standing,
near me and Jim, and faced the crowd. He drew himself up a bit,
and looked round as haughty as he used to do when he walked up the big room
at the Prospectors' Arms in Turon -- as if all the rest of us
was dirt under his feet.

`Well, my lads,' he said, `you've done me the great honour to elect me
to be your captain. I'm willing to act, or I shouldn't be here.
If you're fools enough to risk your lives and liberties
for a thousand ounces of gold a man, I'm fool enough to show you the way.'

`Hurrah!' said half-a-dozen of them, flinging up their hats.
`We're on, Captain. Starlight for ever! You ride ahead and we'll back up.'

`That will do,' he says, holding up his hand as if to stop
a lot of dogs barking; `but listen to me.' Here he spoke a few words
in that other voice of his that always sounded to me and Jim
as if it was a different man talking, or the devil in his likeness.
`Now mind this before we go: you don't quite know me;
you will by and by, perhaps. When I take command of this gang,
for this bit of work or any other, my word's law -- do you hear?
And if any man disputes it or disobeys my orders, by ----,
I'll shoot him like a dog.'

As he stood there looking down on the lot of 'em, as if he was their king,
with his eyes burning up at last with that slow fire that lay
at the bottom of 'em, and only showed out sometimes,
I couldn't help thinking of a pirate crew that I'd read of when I was a boy,
and the way the pirate captain ruled 'em.

Chapter 34

We were desperate fidgety and anxious till the day came.
While we were getting ready two or three things went wrong, of course.
Jim got a letter from Jeanie, all the way from Melbourne, where she'd gone.
It seems she'd got her money from the bank -- Jim's share of the gold --
all right. She was a saving, careful little woman, and she told him
she'd enough to keep them both well for four or five years, anyhow.
What she wanted him to do was to promise that he'd never be mixed up
in any more dishonest work, and to come away down to her at once.

`It was the easiest thing in the world,' she said, `to get away from Melbourne
to England or America. Ships were going every day, and glad to take any man
that was strong and willing to work his passage for nothing;
they'd pay him besides.'

She'd met one or two friends down there as would do anything
to help her and him. If he would only get down to Melbourne
all would yet be well; but she begged and prayed him, if he loved her,
and for the sake of the life she hoped to live with him yet,
to come away from his companions and take his own Jeanie's advice,
and try and do nothing wrong for the future.

If Jim had got his letter before we made up matters, just at the last
he'd have chucked up the sponge and cleared out for good and all.
He as good as said so; but he was one of them kind of men
that once he'd made a start never turned back. There'd been some chaff,
to make things worse, between Moran and Daly and some of the other fellows
about being game and what not, specially after what father said at the hut,
so he wouldn't draw out of it now.

I could see it fretted him worse than anything since we came back,
but he filled himself up with the idea that we'd be sure to get the gold
all right, and clear out different ways to the coast, and then we'd have
something worth while leaving off with. Another thing, we'd been all used
to having what money we wanted lately, and we none of us fancied
living like poor men again in America or anywhere else.
We hadn't had hardly a scrap from Aileen since we'd come back this last time.
It wasn't much odds. She was regular broken-hearted; you could see it
in every line.

`She had been foolish enough to hope for better things,' she said;
`now she expected nothing more in this world, and was contented
to wear out her miserable life the best way she could. If it wasn't that
her religion told her it was wrong, and that mother depended on her,
she'd drown herself in the creek before the door. She couldn't think
why some people were brought into this miserable world at all. Our family
had been marked out to evil, and the same fate would follow us to the end.
She was sorry for Jim, and believed if he had been let take his own road
that he would have been happy and prosperous to-day. It was a pity
he could not have got away safely to Melbourne with his wife
before that wicked woman, who deserved to be burnt alive, ruined everything.
Even now we might all escape, the country seemed in so much confusion
with all the strangers and bad people' (bad people -- well, every one thinks
their own crow the blackest) `that the goldfields had brought into it,
that it wouldn't be hard to get away in a ship somehow. If nothing else
bad turned up perhaps it might come to pass yet.'

This was the only writing we'd had from poor Aileen. It began
all misery and bitterness, but got a little better at the end.
If she and Gracey could have got hold of Kate Morrison
there wouldn't have been much left of her in a quarter of an hour,
I could see that.

Inside was a little bit of paper with one line, `For my sake,' that was all.
I knew the writing; there was no more. I could see what Gracey meant,
and wished over and over again that I had the chance of going straight,
as I'd wished a thousand times before, but it was too late, too late!
When the coach is running down hill and the break's off,
it's no use trying to turn. We had all our plan laid out and settled
to the smallest thing. We were to meet near Eugowra Rocks
a good hour or two before the escort passed, so as to have everything ready.
I remember the day as well as if it was yesterday. We were all
in great buckle and very fit, certainly. I don't think I ever felt better
in my life. There must be something out-and-out spiriting in a real battle
when a bit of a scrimmage like this sent our blood boiling through our veins;
made us feel as if we weren't plain Dick and Jim Marston,
but regular grand fellows, in a manner of speaking. What fools men are
when they're young -- and sometimes after that itself -- to be sure.

We started at daylight, and only stopped once on the road
for a bite for ourselves and to water the horses, so that we were
in good time. We brought a little corn with us, just to give
the horses something; they'd be tied up for hours and hours
when we got to the place pitched on. They were all there before us;
they hadn't as good horses by a long chalk as we had,
and two of their packers were poor enough. Jim and I were riding ahead
with Starlight a little on the right of us. When the fellows saw Rainbow
they all came crowding round him as if he'd been a show.

`By George!' says Burke, `that's a horse worth calling a horse, Captain.
I often heard tell of him, but never set eyes on him before. I've two minds
to shake him and leave you my horse and a share of the gold to boot.
I never saw his equal in my life, and I've seen some plums too.'

`Honour among -- well -- bush-rangers, eh, Burke?' says Starlight cheerily.
`He's the right sort, isn't he? We shall want good goers to-night.
Are we all here now? We'd better get to business.'

Yes, they were all there, a lot of well-built, upstanding chaps,
young and strong, and fit to do anything that a man could do
in the way of work or play. It was a shame to see them there
(and us too, for the matter of that), but there was no get away now.
There will be fools and rogues to the end of the world, I expect.
Even Moran looked a bit brighter than he did last time.
He was one of those chaps that a bit of real danger smartens up.
As for Burke, Daly, and Hulbert, they were like a lot of schoolboys,
so full of their fun and larks.

Starlight just spoke a word to them all; he didn't talk much,
but looked hard and stern about the face, as a captain ought to do.
He rode up to the gap and saw where the trees had been cut down
to block up the road. It would be hard work getting the coach
through there now -- for a bit to come.

After that our horses and the two packers were left behind
with Warrigal and father, close enough for hearing, but well
out of the way for seeing; it was behind a thick belt of timber.
They tied up some to trees and short-hobbled others, keeping them all
so as to be ready at a moment's notice. Our men hid themselves behind
rocks and stumps on the high side of the road so as they could see well,
and had all the shadow on their side. Wall and Hulbert and their lot
had their mob of horses, packers, and all planted away, and two young fellows
belonging to their crowd minding them.