Robbery Under Arms

R >> Rolf Boldrewood >> Robbery Under Arms

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The tea was made, and we all had a good meal. Father found
a bottle of rum, too; he took a good drink himself, and gave Jim and me
a sip each. I felt less inclined to quarrel with father after that.
So we drafted all the calves into a small pen-yard, and began to put
our brand on them as quick as we could catch 'em.

A hundred and sixty of 'em altogether -- all ages, from a month old
to nearly a year. Fine strong calves, and in rare condition, too.
We could see they were all belonging to Mr. Hunter and Mr. Falkland.
How they came to leave them all so long unbranded I can't say.
Very careless they often are on these large cattle-stations,
so that sharp people like father and the Dalys, and a lot more,
get an easy chance at them.

Whatever father was going to do with them all when he had branded 'em,
we couldn't make out.

`There's no place to tail or wean 'em,' whispered Jim. `We're not above
thirty miles from Banda in a straight line. These cows are dead sure
to make straight back the very minute they're let out,
and very nice work it'll look with all these calves with our brand on
sucking these cows.'

Father happened to come round for a hot brand just as Jim finished.

`Never you mind about the weaning,' he snarled. `I shan't ask you
to tail them either. It wouldn't be a nice job here, would it?'
and father actually laughed. It wasn't a very gay kind of a laugh,
and he shut up his mouth with a sort of snap again.
Jim and I hadn't seen him laugh for I don't know how long,
and it almost frightened us.

As Jim said, it wouldn't do to let the cattle out again.
If calves are weaned, and have only one brand on, it is very hard for any man
to swear that they are not the property of the man to whom that brand belongs.
He may believe them to be his, but may never have seen them in his life;
and if he has seen them on a camp or on the run, it's very hard to swear
to any one particular red or spotted calf as you would to a horse.

The great dart is to keep the young stock away from their mothers
until they forget one another, and then most of the danger is past.
But if calves with one man's brand on are seen sucking another man's cows,
it is pretty plain that the brand on the calves has been put on
without the consent of the owner of the cows -- which is cattle-stealing;
a felony, according to the Act 7 and 8 George IV, No. 29,
punishable with three years' imprisonment, with hard labour
on the roads of the colony or other place, as the Judge may direct.

There's a lot of law! How did I learn it? I had plenty of time
in Berrima Gaol -- worse luck -- my first stretch. But it was
after I'd done the foolishness, and not before.

Chapter 5

`Now then, you boys!' says father, coming up all of a sudden like,
and bringing out his words as if it was old times with us,
when we didn't know whether he'd hit first and talk afterwards,
or the other way on, `get out the lot we've just branded,
and drive 'em straight for that peak, where the water shines
dripping over the stones, right again the sun, and look slippy;
we're burning daylight, and these cows are making row enough, blast 'em!
to be heard all the way to Banda. I'll go on and steady the lead;
you keep 'em close up to me.'

Father mounted the old mare. The dog stopped behind; he knew
he'd have to mind the tail -- that is the hindmost cattle -- and stop 'em
from breaking or running clear away from the others. We threw down the rails.
Away the cattle rushed out, all in a long string. You'd 'a thought
no mortal men could 'a kept 'em in that blind hole of a place.
But father headed 'em, and turned 'em towards the peak.
The dog worried those that wanted to stay by the yard or turn another way.
We dropped our whip on 'em, and kept 'em going. In five minutes
they were all a-moving along in one mob at a pretty sharpish trot
like a lot of store cattle. Father knew his way about,
whether the country was thick or open. It was all as one to him.
What a slashing stockman he would have made in new country,
if he only could have kept straight.

It took us an hour's hard dinkum to get near the peak. Sometimes it was
awful rocky, as well as scrubby, and the poor devils of cattle
got as sore-footed as babies -- blood up to the knee, some of 'em;
but we crowded 'em on; there was no help for it.

At last we rounded up on a flat, rocky, open kind of a place;
and here father held up his hand.

`Let 'em ring a bit; some of their tongues are out. These young things
is generally soft. Come here, Dick.' I rode up, and he told me
to follow him.

We walked our horses up to the edge of the mountain and looked over.
It was like the end of the world. Far down there was a dark, dreadful drop
into a sort of deep valley below. You couldn't see the bottom of it.
The trees on the mountain side looked like bushes, and they were
big ironbarks and messmates too. On three sides of us was this awful,
desolate-looking precipice -- a dreary, gloomy, God-forsaken kind of spot.
The sky got cloudy, and the breeze turned cold and began to murmur and whistle
in an odd, unnatural kind of way, while father, seeing how scared and puzzled
I was, began to laugh. I shuddered. A thought crossed my mind
that it might be the Enemy of Souls, in his shape, going to carry us off
for doing such a piece of wickedness.

`Looks queer, doesn't it?' says father, going to the brink and kicking down
a boulder, that rolled and crashed down the steep mountain side,
tearing its way through scrub and heath till it settled down
in the glen below. `It won't do for a man's horse to slip, will it, boy?
And yet there's a track here into a fine large paddock, open and clear, too,
where I'm going to put these cattle into.'

I stared at him, without speaking, thinking was he mad.

`No! the old man isn't mad, youngster,' he said; `not yet, at least.
I'm going to show you a trick that none of you native boys are up to,
smart as you think yourselves.' Here he got off the old mare,
and began to lead her to the edge of the mountain.

`Now, you rally the cattle well after me,' he said; `they'll follow
the old mare after a bit. I left a few cows among 'em on purpose,
and when they "draw" keep 'em going well up, but not too fast.'

He had lengthened the bridle of the mare, and tied the end
of a light tether rope that he had round her neck to it.
I saw her follow him slowly, and turn down a rocky track that seemed to lead
straight over a bluff of the precipice.

However, I gave the word to `head on'. The dog had started rounding 'em up
as soon as he saw the old mare walk towards the mountain side,
and the cattle were soon crushed up pretty close to the mare's heels.

Mind this, that they were so footsore and tender about the hoofs
that they could not have run away from us on foot if they had tried.

After `ringing' a bit, one of the quiet cows followed up the old mare
that was walking step by step forward, and all the rest followed her
like sheep. Cattle will do that. I've seen a stockrider,
when all the horses were dead beat, trying to get fat cattle
to take a river in flood, jump off and turn his horse loose into the stream.
If he went straight, and swam across, all the cattle would follow him
like sheep.

Well, when the old mare got to the bluff she turned short round to the right,
and then I saw that she had struck a narrow path down a gully
that got deeper and deeper every yard we went. There was just room
for a couple or three calves to go abreast, and by and by all of 'em
was walking down it like as if they was the beasts agoing into Noah's Ark.
It wound and wound and got deeper and deeper till the walls of rock
were ever so far above our heads. Our work was done then; the cattle
had to walk on like sheep in a race. We led our horses behind them,
and the dog walked along, saving his sore feet as well as he could,
and never tried to bite a beast once he got within the walls.
He looked quite satisfied, and kept chuckling almost to himself.
I really believe I've seen dogs laugh. Once upon a time I've read of
they'd have taken poor Crib for a familiar spirit, and hanged or burnt him.
Well, he knew a lot, and no mistake. I've seen plenty of Christians
as he could buy and sell, and no trouble to him. I'm dashed if the old mare,
too, didn't take a pleasure in working cattle on the cross.
She was the laziest old wretch bringing up the cows at home,
or running in the horses. Many a time Jim and I took a turn out of her
when father didn't know. But put her after a big mob of cattle
-- she must have known they couldn't be ours -- and she'd clatter down a range
like the wall of a house, and bite and kick the tail cattle if they didn't get
out of her way. They say dogs and horses are all honest, and it's only us
as teaches 'em to do wrong. My notion's they're a deal like ourselves,
and some of 'em fancies the square racket dull and safe, while some takes
a deal kindlier to the other. Anyhow, no cattle-duffer in the colonies
could have had a better pair of mates than old Sally and Crib,
if the devil himself had broken 'em in special for the trade.

It was child's play now, as far as the driving went. Jim and I walked along,
leading our horses and yarning away as we used to do when we were little chaps
bringing in the milkers.

`My word, Dick, dad's dropped into a fine road through
this thundering mountain, hasn't he? I wonder where it leads to?
How high the rock-walls are getting above us!' he says. `I know now.
I think I heard long ago from one of the Crosbies of a place in the ranges
down towards behind the Nulla Mountain, "Terrible Hollow".
He didn't know about it himself, but said an old stockman told him about it
when he was drunk. He said the Government men used to hide
the cattle and horses there in old times, and that it was never found out.'

`Why wasn't it found out, Jim? If the old fellow "split" about it
some one else would get to know.'

`Well, old Dan said that they killed one man that talked of telling;
the rest were too frightened after that, and they all swore a big oath
never to tell any one except he was on the cross.'

`That's how dad come to know, I suppose,' said Jim. `I wish he never had.
I don't care about those cross doings. I never did. I never seen any good
come out of them yet.'

`Well, we must go through with it now, I suppose. It won't do
to leave old dad in the lurch. You won't, will you, Jim?'

`You know very well I won't,' says Jim, very soberlike. `I don't like it
any the more for that. But I wish father had broke his leg,
and was lying up at home, with mother nursing him, before he found out
this hell-hole of a place.'

`Well, we're going to get out of it, and soon too. The gully seems
getting wider, and I can see a bit of open country through the trees.'

`Thank God for that!' says Jim. `My boots'll part company soon,
and the poor devils of calves won't have any hoofs either,
if there's much more of this.'

`They're drawing faster now. The leading cattle are beginning to run.
We're at the end of the drive.'

So it was. The deep, rocky gully gradually widened into
an open and pretty smooth flat; this, again, into a splendid little plain,
up to the knees in grass; a big natural park, closed round on every side
with sandstone rockwalls, as upright as if they were built,
and a couple of thousand feet above the place where we stood.

This scrub country was crossed by two good creeks; it was
several miles across, and a trifle more in length. Our hungry weaners
spread out and began to feed, without a notion of their mothers
they'd left behind; but they were not the only ones there.
We could see other mobs of cattle, some near, some farther off;
horses, too; and the well-worn track in several ways showed
that this was no new grazing ground.

Father came riding back quite comfortable and hearty-like for him.

`Welcome to Terrible Hollow, lads,' says he. `You're the youngest chaps
it has ever been shown to, and if I didn't know you were the right stuff,
you'd never have seen it, though you're my own flesh and blood.
Jump off, and let your horses go. They can't get away, even if they tried;
they don't look much like that.'

Our poor nags were something like the cattle, pretty hungry and stiff.
They put their heads down to the thick green grass, and went in at it
with a will.

`Bring your saddles along with you,' father said, `and come after me.
I'll show you a good camping place. You deserve a treat
after last night's work.'

We turned back towards the rocky wall, near to where we had come in,
and there, behind a bush and a big piece of sandstone that had fallen down,
was the entrance to a cave. The walls of it were quite clean
and white-looking, the floor was smooth, and the roof was pretty high,
well blackened with smoke, too, from the fires which had been lighted in it
for many a year gone by.

A kind of natural cellar had been made by scooping out the soft sandstone
behind a ledge. From this father took a bag of flour and corn-meal.
We very soon made some cakes in the pan, that tasted well, I can tell you.
Tea and sugar too, and quart pots, some bacon in a flour-bag;
and that rasher fried in the pan was the sweetest meat I ever ate
in all my born days.

Then father brought out a keg and poured some rum into a pint pot.
He took a pretty stiff pull, and then handed it to us. `A little of it
won't hurt you, boys,' he said, `after a night's work.'

I took some -- not much; we hadn't learned to drink then --
to keep down the fear of something hanging over us. A dreadful fear it is.
It makes a coward of every man who doesn't lead a square life,
let him be as game as he may.

Jim wouldn't touch it. `No,' he said, when I laughed at him,
`I promised mother last time I had more than was good for me at Dargo Races
that I wouldn't touch it again for two years; and I won't either.
I can stand what any other man can, and without the hard stuff, either.'

`Please yourself,' said father. `When you're ready we'll have a ride
through the stock.'

We finished our meal, and a first-rate one it was. A man never has
the same appetite for his meals anywhere else that he has in the bush,
specially if he has been up half the night. It's so fresh,
and the air makes him feel as if he'd ate nothing for a week.
Sitting on a log, or in the cave, as we were, I've had the best meal
I've ever tasted since I was born. Not like the close-feeling,
close-smelling, dirty-clean graveyard they call a gaol.
But it's no use beginning on that. We were young men, and free, too. Free!
By all the devils in hell, if there are devils -- and there must be
to tempt a man, or how could he be so great a fool, so blind a born idiot,
as to do anything in this world that would put his freedom in jeopardy?
And what for? For folly and nonsense. For a few pounds he could earn
with a month's honest work and be all the better man for it.
For a false woman's smile that he could buy, and ten like her,
if he only kept straight and saving. For a bit of sudden pride
or vanity or passion. A short bit of what looks like pleasure,
against months and years of weariness, and cold and heat, and dull half-death,
with maybe a dog's death at the end!

I could cry like a child when I think of it now. I have cried
many's the time and often since I have been shut up here,
and dashed my head against the stones till I pretty nigh knocked
all sense and feeling out of it, not so much in repentance, though I don't say
I feel sorry, but to think what a fool, fool, fool I'd been. Yes, fool,
three times over -- a hundred times -- to put my liberty and life
against such a miserable stake -- a stake the devil that deals the pack
is so safe to win at the end.

I may as well go on. But I can't help breaking out sometimes
when I hear the birds calling to one another as they fly over the yard,
and know it's fresh air and sun and green grass outside
that I never shall see again. Never see the river rippling under
the big drooping trees, or the cattle coming down in the twilight
to drink after the long hot day. Never, never more! And whose fault is it?
Who have I to blame? Perhaps father helped a bit; but I knew better,
and no one is half as much to blame as myself.

Where were we? Oh, at the cave-mouth, coming out with our bridles
in our hands to catch our horses. We soon did that, and then we rode away
to the other cattle. They were a queer lot, in fine condition,
but all sorts of ages and breeds, with every kind of brand and ear-mark.

Lots of the brands we didn't know, and had never heard of.
Some had no brands at all -- full-grown beasts, too;
that was a thing we had very seldom seen. Some of the best cattle
and some of the finest horses -- and there were some real plums
among the horses -- had a strange brand, JJ.

`Who does the JJ brand belong to?' I said to father.
`They're the pick of the lot, whose ever they are.'

Father looked black for a bit, and then he growled out, `Don't you ask
too many questions, lad. There's only four living men besides yourselves
knows about this place; so take care and don't act foolishly,
or you'll lose a plant that may save your life, as well as keep you in cash
for many a year to come. That brand belongs to Starlight,
and he was the only man left alive of the men that first found it and used it
to put away stock in. He wanted help, and told me five years ago.
He took in a half-caste chap, too, against my will. He helped him
with that last lot of cattle that you noticed.'

`But where did those horses come from?' Jim said. `I never hardly saw
such a lot before. All got the JJ brand on, too, and nothing else;
all about three year old.'

`They were brought here as foals,' says father, `following their mothers.
Some of them was foaled here; and, of course, as they've only the one brand on
they never can be claimed or sworn to. They're from some of Mr. Maxwell's
best thoroughbred mares, and their sire was Earl of Atheling, imported.
He was here for a year.'

`Well, they might look the real thing,' said Jim, his eyes brightening
as he gazed at them. `I'd like to have that dark bay colt with the star.
My word, what a forehand he's got; and what quarters, too. If he can't gallop
I'll never say I know a horse from a poley cow.'

`You shall have him, or as good, never fear, if you stick to your work,'
says father. `You mustn't cross Starlight, for he's a born devil
when he's taken the wrong way, though he talks so soft. The half-caste
is an out-and-out chap with cattle, and the horse doesn't stand on four legs
that he can't ride -- and make follow him, for the matter of that.
But he's worth watching. I don't believe in him myself.
And now ye have the lot.'

`And a d----d fine lot they are,' I said, for I was vexed with Jim
for taking so easy to the bait father held out to him about the horse.
`A very smart crowd to be on the roads inside of five years,
and drag us in with 'em.'

`How do you make that out?' says father. `Are you going to turn dog,
now you know the way in? Isn't it as easy to carry on for a few years more
as it was twenty years ago?'

`Not by a long chalk,' I said, for my blood was up, and I felt as if
I could talk back to father and give him as good as he sent,
and all for Jim's sake. Poor Jim! He'd always go to the mischief
for the sake of a good horse, and many another `Currency' chap
has gone the same way. It's a pity for some of 'em that a blood horse
was ever foaled.

`You think you can't be tracked,' says I, `but you must bear in mind
you haven't got to do with the old-fashioned mounted police
as was potterin' about when this "bot" was first hit on.
There's chaps in the police getting now, natives or all the same,
as can ride and track every bit as well as the half-caste
you're talking about. Some day they'll drop on the track of a mob
coming in or getting out, and then the game will be all up.'

`You can cut it if you like now,' said father, looking at me curious like.
`Don't say I dragged you in. You and your brother can go home,
and no one will ever know where you were; no more than if you'd gone
to the moon.'

Jim looked at the brown colt that just came trotting up as dad
finished speaking -- trotting up with his head high and his tail stuck out
like a circus horse. If he'd been the devil in a horsehide
he couldn't have chosen a better moment. Then his eyes began to glitter.

We all three looked at each other. No one spoke. The colt stopped,
turned, and galloped back to his mates like a red flyer with the dogs
close behind him.

It was not long. We all began to speak at once. But in that time
the die was cast, the stakes were down, and in the pool
were three men's lives.

`I don't care whether we go back or not,' says Jim; `I'll do either way
that Dick likes. But that colt I must have.'

`I never intended to go back,' I said. `But we're three d----d fools
all the same -- father and sons. It'll be the dearest horse you ever bought,
Jim, old man, and so I tell you.'

`Well, I suppose it's settled now,' says father; `so let's have no more chat.
We're like a pack of old women, blessed if we ain't.'

After that we got on more sociably. Father took us all over the place,
and a splendid paddock it was -- walled all round but where we had come in,
and a narrow gash in the far side that not one man in a thousand
could ever hit on, except he was put up to it; a wild country for miles
when you did get out -- all scrub and rock, that few people ever had call
to ride over. There was splendid grass everywhere, water, and shelter.
It was warmer, too, than the country above, as you could see
by the coats of the cattle and horses.

`If it had only been honestly come by,' Jim said, `what a jolly place
it would have been!'

Towards the north end of the paddock was a narrow gully
with great sandstone walls all round, and where it narrowed
the first discoverers had built a stockyard, partly with dry stone walls
and partly with logs and rails.

There was no trouble in getting the cattle or horses into this,
and there were all kinds of narrow yards and pens for branding the stock
if they were clearskins, and altering or `faking' the brands
if they were plain. This led into another yard, which opened into
the narrowest part of the gully. Once in this, like the one they came down,
and the cattle or horses had no chance but to walk slowly up,
one behind the other, till they got on the tableland above.
Here, of course, every kind of work that can be done to help disguise cattle
was done. Ear-marks were cut out and altered in shape,
or else the whole ear was cropped off; every letter in the alphabet
was altered by means of straight bars or half-circles, figures, crosses,
everything you could think of.

`Mr. Starlight is an edicated man,' said father. `This is all his notion;
and many a man has looked at his own beast, with the ears altered
and the brand faked, and never dreamed he ever owned it.
He's a great card is Starlight. It's a pity he ever took
to this kind of life.'

Father said this with a kind of real sorrow that made me look at him
to see if the grog had got into his head; just as if his life, mine, and Jim's
didn't matter a straw compared to this man's, whoever he was, that had had
so many better chances than we had and had chucked 'em all away.

But it's a strange thing that I don't think there's any place in the world
where men feel a more real out-and-out respect for a gentleman
than in Australia. Everybody's supposed to be free and equal now;
of course, they couldn't be in the convict days. But somehow a man
that's born and bred a gentleman will always be different from other men
to the end of the world. What's the most surprising part of it
is that men like father, who have hated the breed and suffered by them, too,
can't help having a curious liking and admiration for them.
They'll follow them like dogs, fight for them, shed their blood,
and die for them; must be some sort of a natural feeling.
Whatever it is, it's there safe enough, and nothing can knock it out of
nine-tenths of all the men and women you meet. I began to be uneasy
to see this wonderful mate of father's, who was so many things at once --
a cattle-stealer, a bush-ranger, and a gentleman.

Chapter 6

After we'd fairly settled to stay, father began to be more pleasant
than he'd ever been before. We were pretty likely, he said,
to have a visit from Starlight and the half-caste in a day or two,
if we'd like to wait. He was to meet him at the Hollow
on purpose to help him out with the mob of fat bullocks we had looked at.
Father, it appears, was coming here by himself when he met
this outlying lot of Mr. Hunter's cattle, and thought he and old Crib
could bring them in by themselves. And a mighty good haul it was.
Father said we should share the weaners between the three of us;
that meant 50 Pounds a piece at least. The devil always helps beginners.

We put through a couple of days pleasantly enough, after our
hardish bit of work. Jim found some fish-hooks and a line,
and we caught plenty of mullet and eels in the deep, clear waterholes.
We found a couple of double-barrelled guns, and shot ducks enough
to last us a week. No wonder the old frequenters of the Hollow
used to live here for a month at a time, having great times of it
as long as their grog lasted; and sometimes having the tribe of blacks
that inhabited the district to make merry and carouse with them,
like the buccaneers of the Spanish Main that I've read about, till the plunder
was all gone. There were scrawls on the wall of the first cave we had been in
that showed all the visitors had not been rude, untaught people;
and Jim picked up part of a woman's dress splashed with blood,
and in one place, among some smouldering packages and boxes,
a long lock of woman's hair, fair, bright-brown, that looked
as if the name of Terrible Hollow might not have been given
to this lonely, wonderful glen for nothing.