Robbery Under Arms

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We'd been ready a good bit when a cove comes tearing up full bat.
We were watching to see how he shaped, and whether he looked likely
to lay on the police, when I saw it was Billy the Boy.

`Now I call this something like,' says he, pulling up short:
`army in readiness, the enemy not far off. My word, it is a fine thing
to turn out, ain't it, Dick? Do you chaps feel shaky at all?
Ain't yer gallied the least little bit? They're a-comin'!'

`How long will they be?' Starlight said. `Just remember
that you're not skylarking at a pound-yard, my boy.'

`All right, Captain,' he answered, quiet enough. `I started on ahead
the moment I saw 'em leave the camp. They're safe to be here
in ten minutes now. You can see 'em when they come into the flat.
I'll clear out to the back for a bit. I want 'em to think
I come up permiskus-like when it's over.' So the young rascal galloped away
till the trees hid him, and in a quarter of an hour more
we saw the leaders of the four-horse drag that carried the escort gold
turn round on the forest road and show out into the flat.

It gave me a queer feeling just at first. We hadn't been used to firing
on the Queen's servants, not in cold blood, anyhow, but it was them or us
for it now. There was no time to think about it. They came along
at a steady trot up the hill. We knew the Turon sergeant of police
that drove, a tall man with a big black beard down to his chest.
He had been in an English dragoon regiment, and could handle the ribbons
above a bit. He had a trooper alongside him on the box with his rifle
between his knees. Two more were in the body of the drag.
They had put their rifles down and were talking and laughing,
not expecting anything sudden. Two more of the mounted men rode in front,
but not far. The couple behind were a good way off. All of a sudden
the men in front came on the trees lying across the road.
They pulled up short, and one of them jumped down and looked to see
if anything could be done to move them. The other man held his horse.
The coach drove up close, so that they were bunched up pretty well together.

`Who the devil has been doing that?' sung out the sergeant.
`Just as if the road isn't bad enough without these infernal lazy
scoundrels of bullock-drivers cutting down trees to make us go round.
It's a beastly track here at the best of times.'

`I believe them trees have been fallen on purpose,' says the trooper
that was down. `There's been men, and horses too, about here to-day,
by the tracks. They're up to no good!'

`Fire!'

The order was given in Starlight's clear, bold voice.
Just like a horn it sounded. You might have heard it twice as far off.
A dozen shots followed the next second, making as much row as fifty
because of the way the sound echoed among the rocks.

I never saw a bigger surprise in my life, and wasn't likely to do,
as this was my first regular battle. We had plenty of time to take aim,
and just at first it looked as if the whole blessed lot of the police
was killed and wounded.

The sergeant threw up his arms and fell off the box like a log,
just under the horses' feet. One of the troopers on ahead dropped,
he that was holding the horses, and both horses started off at full gallop.
The two men in the body of the drag were both hit -- one badly.
So when the two troopers came up full gallop from the back
they found us cutting the traces of the team, that was all plunging like mad,
and letting the horses go.

We opened fire at them directly they showed themselves;
of course they couldn't do much in the face of a dozen men,
all well armed and behind good cover. They kept it up for a bit
till one of their horses was hit, and then made tracks for Turon
to report that the escort had been stuck up by twenty or thirty men
at Eugowra Rocks -- the others had come up with the pack-horses by this time,
along with Master Billy the Boy firing his revolver and shouting enough
for half-a-dozen; so we looked a big crowd -- that all the men
were shot dead, wounded, or taken prisoners, and that a strong force
had better be despatched at once to recapture the gold.

A good deal of this was true, though not all. The only man killed was
the sergeant. He was shot clean through the heart, and never stirred again.
Of the five other men, three were badly wounded and two slightly.
We attended to them as well as we could, and tied the others
so that they would not be able to give any bother for an hour or two
at any rate.

Then the trouble began about dividing the gold. We opened the sort of locker
there was in the centre of the coach and took out the square boxes of gold.
They held canvas bags, all labelled and weighed to the grain,
of about 1000 oz. each. There were fourteen boxes in all. Not a bad haul.

Some of the others couldn't read or write, and they wouldn't trust us,
so they brought their friend with them, who was an educated man sure enough.
We were a bit stunned to see him, holding the sort of position he did
at the Turon. But there he was, and he did his work well enough.
He brought a pair of scales with him and weighed the lot,
and portioned it all out amongst us just the same as Mr. Scott, the banker,
used to do for us at the Turon when we brought in our month's washing-up.
We had 5000 oz. Starlight had an extra share on account of being captain,
and the rest had somewhere about 8000 oz. or 9000 oz. among them.
It wasn't so bad.

Dad wasn't long before he had our lot safely packed and on his
two pack-horses. Warrigal and he cleared out at a trot,
and went out of sight in a jiffy. It was every man for himself now.
We waited a bit to help them with their swag; it was awful heavy.
We told them that their pack-horses would never carry it
if there was anything of a close run for it.

`Suppose you think you've got the only good horse in the country,
Dick Marston,' says Daly. `We'll find a horse to run anything you've got,
barrin' Rainbow. I've got a little roan horse here as shall run ever a horse
ye own, for three mile, for a hundred notes, with twelve stone up.
What do you think of that, now?'

`Don't take your shirt off, Patsey,' I said. `I know the roan's as good
as ever was foaled' (so he was; the police got him after Patsey was done for,
and kept him till he died of old age), `but he's in no condition.
I'm talking of the pack-horses; they're not up to much, as you'll find out.'

We didn't want to rush off at once, for fear the other fellows
might say something afterwards if anything happened cross.
So we saw them make a fair start for a spot on Weddin Mountain,
where they thought they were right. We didn't think we could be caught
once we made tracks in earnest. After a couple or three hours' riding
we should be pretty safe, and daylight would see us at the Hollow.

We stopped, besides, to do what we could for the wounded men.
They were none of them regularly done for, except the sergeant.
One man was shot through the lungs, and was breathing out blood
every now and then. We gave them some brandy and water,
and covered them all up and left them as comfortable as we could.
Besides that, we sent Billy the Boy, who couldn't be recognised,
to the camp to have a doctor sent as soon as possible.
Then we cleared and started off, not the way we had to go,
but so as we could turn into it.

We couldn't ride very slow after such a turn as that, so we made the pace
pretty hot for the first twenty miles or so. By Jove! it was a great ride;
the forest was middling open, and we went three parts speed
when we could see before us. The horses seemed to go
as if they knew there was something up. I can see Rainbow now,
swinging along with that beautiful bounding style of going he had,
snorting now and then and sending out his legs as if one hundred miles,
more or less, was nothing. His head up, his eye shining like a star,
his nostrils open, and every now and then, if anything got up,
he'd give a snort as if he'd just come up out of the bush.
They'd had a longish day and a fast ride before they got to Eugowra,
just enough to eat to keep them from starving, with a drink of water.
Now they were going the same style back, and they'd never had the saddles
off their backs. All the night through we rode before we got
to the top of Nulla Mountain; very glad to see it we were then.
We took it easy for a few miles now and again, then we'd push on again.
We felt awful sleepy at times; we'd been up and at it
since the morning before; long before daylight, too.
The strangeness and the chance of being followed kept us up, else I believe
we'd have dropped off our horses' backs, regular dead beat.

We lost ground now and then through Warrigal not being there to guide us,
but Jim took the lead and he wasn't far out; besides, the horses knew
which way to steer for their grass at the Hollow. They wouldn't let us go
much off the line if it was ever so dark. We gave 'em their heads mostly.
The sun was just rising as we rode across the last tableland.
We got off and stumbled along, horses and men, down the track to the Hollow.
Dad and Warrigal hadn't come back; of course they couldn't stand
the pace we did. They'd have to camp for a bit, but they both knew
of plants and hiding holes, where all the police in the colony
couldn't find them. We knew they'd turn up some time next day.
So we let go our horses, and after a bit of supper laid down and slept
till well on in the afternoon.

When I looked round I saw the dog sleeping at Jim's feet, old Crib.
He never left father very far, so of course the old man must be home,
or pretty close up. I was that dead beat and tired out
that I turned over and went to sleep for another couple of hours.
When I next woke up I was right and felt rested, so I put on my things,
had a good wash, and went out to speak to father. He was sitting
by the fire outside smoking, just as if he'd never been away.

Chapter 35

`We done that job to rights if we never done another, eh, lad?' says father,
reaching out for a coal to put in his pipe.

`Seems like it,' I said. `There'll be a deuce of a bobbery about it.
We shan't be able to move for a bit, let alone clear out.'

`We'll show 'em a trick or two yet,' says dad. I could see he'd had a tot,
early as it was. `I wonder how them chaps got on? But we'll hear soon.'

`How shall we hear anything? Nobody'll be mad enough to show out of here
for a bit.'

`I could get word here,' says father, `if there was a police barrack
on the top of Nulla Mountain. I've done it afore, and I can do it again.'

`Well, I hope it won't be long, for I'm pretty full up of this
staying-at-home business in the Hollow. It's well enough for a bit,
but it's awful slow when you've too much of it.'

`It wouldn't be very slow if we was all grabbed and tried for our lives,
Mr. Dick Marston. Would ye like that better for a change?' says the old man,
showing his teeth like a dog that's making up his mind to have ye
and don't see where he's to get first bite. `You leave the thing
to them as knows more than you do, or you'll find yourself took in,
and that precious sharp.'

`You'll find your pals, Burke and Moran, and their lot
will have their turn first,' I said, and with that I walked off,
for I saw the old man had been drinking a bit after his night's work,
and that always started his temper the wrong way. There was
no doing anything with him then, as I knew by long experience.
I was going to ask him where he'd put the gold, but thought it best
to leave that for some other time.

By and by, when we all turned out and had some breakfast,
we took a bit of a walk by ourselves and talked it over.
We could hardly think it was all done and over.

`The gold escort stuck up. Fourteen thousand ounces of gold taken.
Sergeant Hawkins shot dead. The robbers safe off with their booty.'

This is the sort of thing that we were sure to see in all the papers.
It would make a row and no mistake. It was the first time such a thing
had been thought of, much less carried out `to rights', as father said,
`in any of the colonies.' We had the five thousand ounces of gold,
safe enough, too. That was something; whether we should be let enjoy it,
or what chance we had of getting right away out of the country,
was quite another matter. We were all sorry for Sergeant Hawkins,
and would have been better pleased if he'd been only wounded like the others.
But these sorts of things couldn't be helped. It was the fortune of war;
his luck this time, ours next. We knew what we had to expect.
Nothing would make much difference. `As well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.'
We were up to our necks in it now, and must fight our way out
the best way we could.

Bar any man betraying the secret of the Hollow we might be safe
for years to come, as long as we were not shot or taken in fair fight.
And who was to let out the secret? No one but ourselves
had the least notion of the track or where it led to,
or of such a place as the Hollow being in the colony. Only us five
were in possession of the secret. We never let any of these other men
come near, much less to it. We took good care never to meet them
within twenty miles of it. Father was a man that, even when he was drunk,
never let out what he didn't want other people to know.
Jim and I and Starlight were not likely to blab, and Warrigal
would have had his throat cut sooner than let on about anything that might be
against Starlight, or that he told him not to do.

We had good reason, then, to think ourselves safe as long as we had
such a place to make for whenever we were in danger or had done a stroke.
We had enough in gold and cash to keep us comfortable in any other country --
provided we could only get there. That was the rub. When we'd got
a glass or two in our heads we thought it was easy enough
to get across country, or to make away one by one at shearing time,
disguised as swagsmen, to the coast. But when we thought it over carefully
in the mornings, particularly when we were a bit nervous after the grog
had died out of us, it seemed a rather blue look-out.

There was the whole countryside pretty thick with police stations,
where every man, from the sergeant to the last-joined recruit,
knew the height, size, colour of hair, and so on of every one of us.
If a suspicious-looking man was seen or heard of within miles
the telegraph wires could be set to work. He could be met, stopped,
searched, and overhauled. What chance would any of us have then?

`Don't flatter yourselves, my boy,' Starlight said, when we'd got
the length of thinking how it was to be done, `that there's any little
bit of a chance, for a year or two at any rate, of getting away.
Not a kangaroo rat could hop across from one scrub to another
if there was the least suspicion upon him without being blocked or run into.
Jim, old man, I'm sorry for you, but my belief is we're quartered here
for a year or two certain, and the sooner we make up our minds to it
the better.'

Here poor old Jim groaned. `Don't you think,' he said, quite timid-like,
`that about shearing-time a man might take his chance,
leading an old horse with a swag on, as if he wanted to get shearing
in some of the big down-the-river sheds?'

`Not a bit of it,' says Starlight. `You're such a good-looking,
upstanding chap that you're safe to be pulled up and made answer for yourself
before you'd get fifty miles. If you rode a good horse
they'd think you were too smart-looking for a regular shearer,
and nail you at once.'

`But I'd take an old screw with a big leg,' pleaded Jim.
`Haven't I often seen a cove walking and leading one just to carry
his blankets and things?'

`Then they'd know a chap like you, full of work and a native to boot,
ought to have a better turn-out -- if it wasn't a stall.
So they'd have you for that.'

`But there's Isaac Lawson and Campbelltown. You've seen them.
Isaac's an inch taller than me, and the same cut and make.
Why shouldn't they shop them when they're going shearing?
They're square enough, and always was. And Campbelltown's
a good deal like Dick, beard and all.'

`Well, I'll bet you a new meerschaum that both men are arrested on suspicion
before shearing. Of course they'll let them go again; but, you mark my words,
they'll be stopped, as well as dozens of others. That will show
how close the search will be.'

`I don't care,' says Jim, in his old, obstinate way, which he never put on
except very seldom. `I'll go in a month or two -- police or no police.
I'll make for Melbourne if there was an army of soldiers
between me and Jeanie.'

We had to settle where the gold was to be hid. After a lot of talk
we agreed to keep one bag in a hole in the side of the wall of the cave,
and bury the others in the place where we'd found old Mr. Devereux's box.
His treasure had laid many a year safe and sound without anybody touching it,
and we thought ours might do the same. Besides, to find it
they must get into the Hollow first. So we packed it out bag by bag,
and made an ironbark coffin for it, and buried it away there,
and put some couch-grass turfs on it. We knew they'd soon grow up,
and nobody could tell that it hadn't always been covered up
the same as the rest of the old garden.

It felt pretty hard lines to think we shouldn't be able to get away
from this lonely place after the life we'd led the last year; but Starlight
wasn't often wrong, and we came to the same way of thinking ourselves
when we looked at it all round, steady and quiet like.

We'd been a week or ten days all by ourselves, horse-breaking, fishing,
and shooting a bit, thinking how strange it was that we should have
more than 20,000 Pounds in gold and money and not be able
to do anything with it, when dad, sudden like, said he'd go out himself
and get some of the newspapers, and perhaps a letter or two if any came.

Starlight laughed at him a bit for being foolhardy, and said
we should hear of his being caught and committed for trial.
`Why, they'll know the dog,' says he, `and make him give evidence in court.
I've known that done before now. Inspector Merlin nailed a chap
through his dog.'

Father grinned. `I know'd that case -- a sheep-stealing one.
They wanted to make out Brummy was the man as owned the dorg --
a remarkable dorg he was, too, and had been seen driving the sheep.'

`Well, what did the dog do? Identify the prisoner, didn't he?'

`Well, the dashed fool of a coolie did. Jumps up as soon as he was brought
into court, and whines and scratches at the dock rails and barks,
and goes on tremenjus, trying to get at Brummy.'

`How did his master like it?'

`Oh! Brummy? He looked as black as the ace of spades.
He'd have made it hot for that dorg if he could ha' got at him.
But I suppose he forgived him when he came out.'

`Why should he?'

`Because the jury fetched him in guilty without leaving the box,
and the judge give him seven years. You wouldn't find this old varmint
a-doin' no such foolishness as that.'

Here he looks at Crib, as was lyin' down a good way off, and not letting on
to know anything. He saw father's old mare brought up, though, and saddled,
and knowed quite well what that meant. He never rode her unless he was going
out of the Hollow.

`I believe that dog could stick up a man himself as well as some fellows
we know,' says Starlight, `and he'd do it, too, if your father
gave him the word.'

. . . . .

While we were taking it easy, and except for the loneliness of it as safe
as if we had been out of the country altogether, Moran and the other fellows
hadn't quite such a good time of it. They were hunted from pillar to post
by the police, who were mad to do something to meet the chaff
that was always being cast up to them of having a lot of bush-rangers
robbing and shooting all over the country and not being able to take them.
There were some out-of-the-way places enough in the Weddin Mountains,
but none like the Hollow, where they could lie quiet and untroubled
for weeks together, if they wanted. Besides, they had lost their gold
by their own foolishness in not having better pack-horses, and hadn't much
to carry on with, and it's not a life that can be worked on the cheap,
I can tell you, as we often found out. Money comes easy in our line,
but it goes faster still, and a man must never be short of a pound or two
to chuck about if he wants to keep his information fresh, and to have people
working for him night and day with a will.

So they had some every-day sort of work cut out to keep themselves going,
and it took them all their time to get from one part of the country
where they were known to some other place where they weren't expected.
Having out-and-out good hacks, and being all of them chaps
that had been born in the bush and knew it like a book,
it was wonderful how they managed to rob people at one place one day,
and then be at some place a hundred miles off the next. Ever so many times
they came off, and they'd call one another Starlight and Marston, and so on,
till the people got regularly dumbfoundered, and couldn't tell
which of the gang it was that seemed to be all over the country,
and in two places at the same time. We used to laugh ourselves sometimes,
when we'd hear tell that all the travellers passing Big Hill on a certain day
were `stuck up by Wall's gang and robbed.' Every man Jack
that came along for hours was made to stand behind a clump of trees
with two of the gang guarding them, so as the others couldn't see them
as they came up. They all had to deliver up what they'd got about 'em,
and no one was allowed to stir till sundown, for fear they should send word
to the police. Then the gang went off, telling them to stay where they were
for an hour or else they'd come back and shoot them.

This would be on the western road, perhaps. Next day a station
on the southern road, a hundred and twenty miles off,
would be robbed by the same lot. Money and valuables taken away,
and three or four of the best horses. Their own they'd leave behind
in such a state that any one could see how far and fast they'd been ridden.

They often got stood to, when they were hard up for a mount,
and it was this way. The squatters weren't alike, by any manner of means,
in their way of dealing with them. Many of them had lots of fine
riding-horses in their paddocks. These would be yarded some fine night,
the best taken and ridden hard, perhaps returned next morning,
perhaps in a day or two.

It was pretty well known who had used them, but nothing was said;
the best policy, some think, is to hold a candle to the devil,
especially when the devil's camped close handy to your paddock,
and might any time sack your house, burn down your woolshed and stacks,
or even shoot at your worshipful self if he didn't like the way
you treated him and his imps.

These careful respectable people didn't show themselves too forward either
in giving help or information to the police. Not by no means.
They never encouraged them to stay when they came about the place,
and weren't that over liberal in feeding their horses,
or giving them a hand in any way, that they'd come again in a hurry.
If they were asked about the bush-rangers, or when they'd been last seen,
they were very careful, and said as little as possible.

No one wonders at people like the Barnes's, or little farmers,
or the very small sort of settlers, people with one flock of sheep
or a few cows, doing this sort of thing; they have a lot to lose
and nothing to get if they gain ill-will. But regular country gentlemen,
with big properties, lots of money, and all the rest of it,
they're there to show a good example to the countryside,
whether it paid for the time or whether it didn't; and all us sort of chaps,
on the cross or not, like them all the better for it.

When I say all of us, I don't mean Moran. A sulky, black-hearted,
revengeful brute he always was -- I don't think he'd any manly feeling
about him. He was a half-bred gipsy, they told us that knew
where he was reared, and Starlight said gipsy blood was a queer cross,
for devilry and hardness it couldn't be beat; he didn't wonder a bit
at Moran's being the scoundrel he was.

No doubt he `had it in' for more than one of the people who helped the police
to chevy Wall and his lot about. From what I knew of him I was sure
he'd do some mischief one of these days, and make all the country
ten times as hot against us as they were now. He had no mercy about him.
He'd rather shoot a man any day than not; and he'd burn a house down
just for the pleasure of seeing how the owner looked when it was lighted.

Starlight used to say he despised men that tried to
save themselves cowardly-like more than he could say,
and thought them worse than the bush-rangers themselves.
Some of them were big people, too.

But other country gentlemen, like Mr. Falkland, were quite
of a different pattern. If they all acted like him
I don't think we should any of us have reigned as long as we did.
They helped and encouraged the police in every possible way.
They sent them information whenever they had received any worth while.
They lent them horses freely when their own were tired out and beaten.
More than that, when bush-rangers were supposed to be in the neighbourhood
they went out with them themselves, lying out and watching
through the long cold nights, and taking their chance of a shot
as well as those that were paid for it.