Robbery Under Arms

R >> Rolf Boldrewood >> Robbery Under Arms

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The agent knew all about us (or thought he did), and sent a chap
to show Mr. Carisforth's cattle (Charles Carisforth, Esq., of Sturton,
Yorkshire and Banda, Waroona, and Ebor Downs, New South Wales;
that was the name he went by) the way to the yards. We were to draft them
all next morning into separate pens -- cows and bullocks,
steers and heifers, and so on. He expected to sell them all
to a lot of farmers and small settlers that had taken up a new district lately
and were very short of stock.

`You couldn't have come into a better market, young fellow,'
says the agent's man to me. `Our boss he's advertised 'em that well
as there'll be smart bidding between the farmers and some of the squatters.
Good store cattle's been scarce, and these is in such rattling condition.
That's what'll sell 'em. Your master seems a regular free-handed
sort of chap. He's the jolliest squatter there's been in town these years,
I hear folk say. Puts 'em in mind of Hawdon and Evelyn Sturt
in the old overlander days.'

Next day we were at the yards early, you bet. We wanted to have time
to draft them into pens of twenty to fifty each, so that
the farmers and small settlers might have a chance to buy. Besides,
it was the last day of our work. Driving all day and watching half the night
is pretty stiffish work, good weather and bad, when you've got to keep it up
for months at a time, and we'd been three months and a week on the road.

The other chaps were wild for a spree. Jim and I had made up our minds
to be careful; still, we had a lot to see in a big town like Adelaide;
for we'd never been to Sydney even in our lives, and we'd never seen the sea.
That was something to look at for the first time, wasn't it?

Well, we got the cattle drafted to rights, every sort and size and age
by itself, as near as could be. That's the way to draft stock,
whether they're cattle, sheep, or horses; then every man can buy
what he likes best, and isn't obliged to lump up one sort with another.
We had time to have a bit of dinner. None of us had touched a mouthful
since before daylight. Then we began to see the buyers come.

There'd been a big tent rigged, as big as a small woolshed, too.
It came out in a cart, and then another cart came with a couple of waiters,
and they laid out a long table of boards on trestles with a real
first-class feed on it, such as we'd never seen in our lives before.
Fowls and turkeys and tongues and rounds of beef, beer and wine in bottles
with gilt labels on. Such a set-out it was. Father began to growl a bit.
`If he's going to feed the whole country this way, he'll spend half the stuff
before we get it, let alone drawing a down on the whole thing.'
But Jim and me could see how Starlight had been working the thing to rights
while he was swelling it in the town among the big bugs.
We told him the cattle would fetch that much more money
on account of the lunch and the blowing the auctioneer was able to do.
These would pay for the feed and the rest of the fal-lals ten times over.
`When he gets in with men like his old pals he loses his head, I believe,'
father says, `and fancies he's what he used to be. He'll get "fitted"
quite simple some day if he doesn't keep a better look-out.'

That might be, but it wasn't to come about this time.
Starlight came riding out by and by, dressed up like a real gentleman,
and lookin' so different that Jim and I hardly dared speak to him --
on a splendid horse too (not Rainbow, he'd been left behind;
he was always left within a hundred miles of The Hollow, and he could do it
in one day if he was wanted to), and a lot of fine dressed chaps with him --
young squatters and officers, and what not. I shouldn't have been surprised
if he'd had the Governor out with him. They told us afterwards he did dine
at Government House reg'lar, and was made quite free and welcome there.

Well, he jumps down and shakes hands with us before them all.
`Well, Jack! Well, Bill!' and so on, calls us his good faithful fellows,
and how well we'd brought the cattle over; nods to father,
who didn't seem able to take it all in; says he'll back us against
any stockmen in Australia; has up Warrigal and shows him off to the company.
`Most intelligent lad.' Warrigal grinned and showed his white teeth.
It was as good as a play.

Then everybody goes to lunch -- swells and selectors, Germans and Paddies,
natives and immigrants, a good many of them, too, and there was
eating and drinking and speechifying till all was blue. By and by
the auctioneer looks at his watch. He'd had a pretty good tuck-in himself,
and they must get to business.

Father opened his eyes at the price the first pen brought,
all prime young bullocks, half fat most of them. Then they all went off
like wildfire; the big men and the little men bidding, quite jealous,
sometimes one getting the lot, sometimes another. One chap made a remark
about there being such a lot of different brands; but Starlight said
they'd come from a sort of depot station of his, and were the odds and ends
of all the mobs of store cattle that he'd purchased the last four years.
That satisfied 'em, particularly as he said it in a careless, fierce way
which he could put on, as if it was like a man's ---- impudence
to ask him anything. It made the people laugh; I could see that.

By and by we comes to the imported bull. He was in a pen by himself,
looking first-rate. His brand had been faked, and the hair had grown
pretty well. It would have took a sharp hand to know him again.

`Well, gentlemen,' says the auctioneer, `here is the imported bull
"Duke of Brunswick". It ain't often an animal of his quality comes in
with a mob of store cattle; but I am informed by Mr. Carisforth
that he left orders for the whole of the cattle to be cleared off the run,
and this valuable animal was brought away in mistake. He was to return
by sea; but as he happens to be here to-day, why, sooner than disappoint
any intending buyer, Mr. Carisforth has given me instructions to put him up,
and if he realises anything near his value he will be sold.'

`Yes!' drawls Starlight, as if a dozen imported bulls, more or less,
made no odds to him, `put him up, by all means, Mr. Runnimall.
Expectin' rather large shipment of Bates's "Duchess" tribe next month.
Rather prefer them on the whole. The "Duke" here is full of Booth blood,
so he may just as well go with the others. I shall never get
what he cost, though; I know that. He's been a most expensive animal to me.'

Many a true word spoken in jest. He had good call to know him,
as well as the rest of us, for a most expensive animal, before all
was said and done. What he cost us all round it would be hard indeed
to cipher up.

Anyhow, there was a great laugh at Starlight's easy way of taking it.
First one and then another of the squatters that was going in for breeding
began to bid, thinking he'd go cheap, until they got warm,
and the bull went up to a price that we never dreamed he'd fetch.
Everything seemed to turn out lucky that day. One would have thought
they'd never seen an imported bull before. The young squatters
got running one another, as I said before, and he went up to 270 Pounds!
Then the auctioneer squared off the accounts as sharp as he could;
an' it took him all his time, what with the German and the small farmers,
who took their time about it, paying in greasy notes and silver and copper,
out of canvas bags, and the squatters, who were too busy chaffing and talking
among themselves to pay at all. It was dark before everything was settled up,
and all the lots of cattle delivered. Starlight told the auctioneer
he'd see him at his office, in a deuced high and mighty kind of way,
and rode off with his new friend.

All of us went back to our camp. Our work was over, but we had to settle up
among ourselves and divide shares. I could hardly believe my eyes
when I saw the cattle all sold and gone, and nothing left at the camp
but the horses and the swags.

When we got there that night it was late enough. After tea
father and I and Jim had a long yarn, settling over what we should do
and wondering whether we were going to get clean away
with our share of the money after all.

`By George!' says Jim, `it's a big touch, and no mistake.
To think of our getting over all right, and selling out so easy,
just as if they was our own cattle. Won't there be a jolly row
when it's all out, and the Momberah people miss their cattle?'
(more than half 'em was theirs). `And when they muster
they can't be off seein' they're some hundreds short.'

`That's what's botherin' me,' says father. `I wish Starlight hadn't been
so thundering flash with it all. It'll draw more notice on us,
and every one 'll be gassin' about this big sale, and all that,
till people's set on to ask where the cattle come from, and what not.'

`I don't see as it makes any difference,' I said. `Somebody was bound
to buy 'em, and we'd have had to give the brands and receipts just the same.
Only if we'd sold to any one that thought there was a cross look about it,
we'd have had to take half money, that's all. They've fetched
a rattling price, through Starlight's working the oracle with those swells,
and no mistake.'

`Yes, but that ain't all of it,' says the old man, filling his pipe.
`We've got to look at what comes after. I never liked that imported bull
being took. They'll rake all the colonies to get hold of him again,
partic'ler as he sold for near three hundred pound.'

`We must take our share of the risk along with the money,' said Jim.
`We shall have our whack of that according to what they fetched to-day.
It'll be a short life and a merry one, though, dad, if we go on big licks
like this. What'll we tackle next -- a bank or Government House?'

`Nothing at all for a good spell, if you've any sense,' growled father.
`It'll give us all we know to keep dark when this thing gets into the papers,
and the police in three colonies are all in full cry like a pack of beagles.
The thing is, what'll be our best dart now?'

`I'll go back overland,' says he. `Starlight's going to take Warrigal
with him, and they'll be off to the islands for a turn.
If he knows what's best for him, he'll never come back.
These other chaps say they'll separate and sell their horses
when they get over to the Murray low down, and work their way up by degrees.
Which way are you boys going?'

`Jim and I to Melbourne by next steamer,' I said. `May as well
see a bit of life now we're in it. We'll come back overland
when we're tired of strange faces.'

`All right,' says father, `they won't know where I'm lyin' by for a bit,
I'll go bail, and the sooner you clear out of Adelaide the better.
News like ours don't take long to travel, and you might be nabbed very simple.
One of ye write a line to your mother and tell her where you're off to,
or she'll be frettin' herself and the gal too -- frettin' over
what can't be helped. But I suppose it's the natur' o' some women.'

We done our settling-up next day. All the sale money was paid over
to Starlight. He cashed the cheques and drew the lot in notes and gold --
such a bundle of 'em there was. He brought them out to us at the camp,
and then we `whacked' the lot. There were eight of us
that had to share and share alike. How much do you think we had to divide?
Why, not a penny under four thousand pounds. It had to be divided
among the eight of us. That came to five hundred a man. A lot of money
to carry about, that was the worst of it.

Next day there was a regular split and squander. We didn't wait long
after daylight, you bet. Father was off and well on his way
before the stars were out of the sky. He took Warrigal's horse, Bilbah,
back with him; he and Starlight was going off to the islands together,
and couldn't take horses with them. But he was real sorry
to part with the cross-grained varmint; I thought he was going to blubber
when he saw father leading him off. Bilbah wouldn't go neither at first;
pulled back, and snorted and went on as if he'd never seen only one man afore
in his life. Father got vexed at last and makes a sign to old Crib;
he fetches him such a `heeler' as gave him something else to think of
for a few miles. He didn't hang back much after that.

The three other chaps went their own road. They kept very dark all through.
I know their names well enough, but there's no use in bringing them up now.

Jim and I cuts off into the town, thinking we was due for a little fun.
We'd never been in a big town before, and it was something new to us.
Adelaide ain't as grand quite as Melbourne or Sydney, but there's something
quiet and homelike about it to my thinking -- great wide streets,
planted with trees; lots of steady-going German farmers,
with their vineyards and orchards and droll little waggons. The women work
as hard as the men, harder perhaps, and get brown and scorched up
in no time -- not that they've got much good looks to lose;
leastways none we ever saw.

We could always tell the German farmers' places along the road
from one of our people by looking outside the door. If it was
an Englishman or an Australian, you'd see where they'd throwed out
the teapot leavings; if it was a German, you wouldn't see nothing.
They drink their own sour wine, if their vines are old enough
to make any, or else hop beer; but they won't lay out their money
in the tea chest or sugar bag; no fear, or the grog either,
and not far wrong. Then the sea! I can see poor old Jim's face now
the day we went down to the port and he seen it for the first time.

`So we've got to the big waterhole at last,' he said. `Don't it make a man
feel queer and small to think of its going away right from here where we stand
to the other side of the world? It's a long way across.'

`Jim,' says I, `and to think we've lived all our lives up to this time
and never set eyes on it before. Don't it seem as if one was shut up
in the bush, or tied to a gum tree, so as one can never have a chance
to see anything? I wonder we stayed in it so long.'

`It's not a bad place, though it is rather slow and wired in sometimes,'
says Jim. `We might be sorry we ever left it yet. When does the steamer
go to Melbourne?'

`The day after to-morrow.'

`I'll be glad to be clear off; won't you?'

We went to the theatre that night, and amused ourselves pretty well
next day and till the time came for our boat to start for Melbourne.
We had altered ourselves a bit, had our hair cut and our beards trimmed
by the hairdresser. We bought fresh clothes, and what with this,
and the feeling of being in a new place and having more money in our pockets
than we'd ever dreamed about before, we looked so transmogrified
when we saw ourselves in the glass that we hardly knew ourselves.
We had to change our names, too, for the first time in our lives;
and it went harder against the grain than you'd think, for all we were
a couple of cattle-duffers, with a warrant apiece sure to be after us
before the year was out.

`It sounds ugly,' says Jim, after we had given our names
as John Simmons and Henry Smith at the hotel where we put up at
till the steamer was ready to start. `I never thought that Jim Marston
was to come to this -- to be afraid to tell a fat, greasy-looking fellow
like that innkeeper what his real name was. Seems such a pitiful mean lie,
don't it, Dick?'

`It isn't so bad as being called No. 14, No. 221, as they sing out
for the fellows in Berrima Gaol. How would you like that, Jim?'

`I'd blow my brains out first,' cried out Jim, `or let some other fellow
do it for me. It wouldn't matter which.'

It was very pleasant, those two or three days in Adelaide,
if they'd only lasted. We used to stroll about the lighted streets
till all hours, watching the people and the shops and everything that makes
a large city different from the country. The different sorts of people,
the carts and carriages, buggies and drays, pony-carriages and spring-carts,
all jumbled up together; even the fruit and flowers and oysters and fish
under the gas-lights seemed strange and wonderful to us. We felt as if
we would have given all the world to have got mother and Aileen down
to see it all. Then Jim gave a groan.

`Only to think,' says he, `that we might have had all this fun some day,
and bought and paid for it honest. Now it isn't paid for.
It's out of some other man's pocket. There's a curse on it;
it will have to be paid in blood or prison time before all's done.
I could shoot myself for being such a cursed fool.'

`Too late to think of that,' I said; `we'll have some fun in Melbourne
for a bit, anyhow. For what comes after we must "chance it",
as we've done before, more than once or twice, either.'

. . . . .

Next day our steamer was to sail. We got Starlight to come down with us
and show us how to take our passage. We'd never done it before,
and felt awkward at it. He'd made up his mind to go to New Zealand,
and after that to Honolulu, perhaps to America.

`I'm not sure that I'll ever come back, boys,' he said, `and if I were you
I don't think I would either. If you get over to San Francisco
you'd find the Pacific Slope a very pleasant country to live in.
The people and the place would suit you all to pieces. At any rate
I'd stay away for a few years and wait till all this blows over.'

I wasn't sorry when the steamer cleared the port, and got out of sight
of land. There we were -- where we'd never been before -- in blue water.
There was a stiff breeze, and in half-an-hour we shouldn't have
turned our heads if we'd seen Hood and the rest of 'em come riding after us
on seahorses, with warrants as big as the mainsail. Jim made sure
he was going to die straight off, and the pair of us wished we'd never seen
Outer Back Momberah, nor Hood's cattle, nor Starlight, nor Warrigal.
We almost made up our minds to keep straight and square
to the last day of our lives. However, the wind died down a bit next day,
and we both felt a lot better -- better in body and worse in mind --
as often happens. Before we got to Melbourne we could eat and drink,
smoke and gamble, and were quite ourselves again. We'd laid it out
to have a reg'lar good month of it in town, takin' it easy,
and stopping nice and quiet at a good hotel, havin' some reasonable pleasure.
Why shouldn't we see a little life? We'd got the cash, and we'd earned that
pretty hard. It's the hardest earned money of all, that's got on the cross,
if fellows only knew, but they never do till it's too late.

When we got tired of doing nothing, and being in a strange place, we'd get
across the border, above Albury somewhere, and work on the mountain runs
till shearing came round again; and we could earn a fairish bit of money.
Then we'd go home for Christmas after it was all over,
and see mother and Aileen again. How glad and frightened they'd be to see us.
It wouldn't be safe altogether, but go we would.

Chapter 13

We got to Melbourne all right, and though it's a different sort of a place
from Sydney, it's a jolly enough town for a couple of young chaps
with money in their pockets. Most towns are, for the matter of that.
We took it easy, and didn't go on the spree or do anything foolish.
No, we weren't altogether so green as that. We looked out
for a quiet place to lodge, near the sea -- St. Kilda they call it,
in front of the beach -- and we went about and saw all the sights,
and for a time managed to keep down the thought that perhaps sooner or later
we'd be caught, and have to stand our trial for this last affair of ours,
and maybe one or two others. It wasn't a nice thing to think of;
and now and then it used to make both of us take an extra drop of grog
by way of driving the thoughts of it out of our heads. That's the worst
of not being straight and square. A man's almost driven to drink
when he can't keep from thinking of all sorts of miserable things
day and night. We used to go to the horse-yards now and then,
and the cattle-yards too. It was like old times to see
the fat cattle and sheep penned up at Flemington, and the butchers
riding out on their spicy nags or driving trotters. But their cattle-yards
was twice as good as ours, and me and Jim used often to wonder
why the Sydney people hadn't managed to have something like them
all these years, instead of the miserable cockatoo things at Homebush
that we'd often heard the drovers and squatters grumble about.

However, one day, as we was sitting on the rails, talking away
quite comfortable, we heard one butcher say to another, `My word,
this is a smart bit of cattle-duffing -- a thousand head too!' `What's that?'
says the other man. `Why, haven't you heard of it?' says the first one,
and he pulls a paper out of his pocket, with this in big letters:
`Great Cattle Robbery. -- A thousand head of Mr. Hood's cattle were
driven off and sold in Adelaide. Warrants are out for the suspected parties,
who are supposed to have left the colony.' Here was a bit of news!
We felt as if we could hardly help falling off the rails;
but we didn't show it, of course, and sat there for half-an-hour,
talking to the buyers and sellers and cracking jokes like the others.
But we got away home as soon as we could, and then we began to settle
what we should do.

Warrants were out, of course, for Starlight, and us too. He was known,
and so were we. Our descriptions were sure to be ready to send out
all over the country. Warrigal they mightn't have noticed.
It was common enough to have a black boy or a half-caste
with a lot of travelling cattle. Father had not shown up much.
He had an old pea-jacket on, and they mightn't have dropped down to him
or the three other chaps that were in it with us; they were just like
any other road hands. But about there being warrants out,
with descriptions, in all the colonies, for a man to be identified,
but generally known as Starlight, and for Richard and James Marston,
we were as certain as that we were in St. Kilda, in a nice quiet little inn,
overlooking the beach; and what a murder it was to have to leave it at all.

Leave the place we had to do at once. It wouldn't do
to be strollin' about Melbourne with the chance of every policeman we met
taking a look at us to see if we tallied with a full description they had
at the office: `Richard and James Marston are twenty-five and twenty-two,
respectively; both tall and strongly built; having the appearance of bushmen.
Richard Marston has a scar on left temple. James Marston has lost
a front tooth,' and so on. When we came to think of it,
they couldn't be off knowing us, if they took it into their heads
to bail us up any day. They had our height and make. We couldn't help
looking like bushmen -- like men that had been in the open air
all their lives, and that had a look as if saddle and bridle rein
were more in our way than the spade and plough-handle.
We couldn't wash the tan off our skins; faces, necks, arms,
all showed pretty well that we'd come from where the sun was hot,
and that we'd had our share of it. They had my scar, got in a row,
and Jim's front tooth, knocked out by a fall from a horse when he was a boy;
there was nothing for it but to cut and run.

`It was time for us to go, my boys,' as the song the Yankee sailor
sung us one night runs, and then, which way to go? Every ship was watched
that close a strange rat couldn't get a passage, and, besides,
we had that feeling we didn't like to clear away altogether
out of the old country; there was mother and Aileen still in it,
and every man, woman, and child that we'd known ever since we were born.
A chap feels that, even if he ain't much good other ways.
We couldn't stand the thought of clearin' out for America,
as Starlight advised us. It was like death to us, so we thought
we'd chance it somewhere in Australia for a bit longer.

Now where we put up a good many drovers from Gippsland used to stay,
as they brought in cattle from there. The cattle had to be brought
over Swanston Street Bridge and right through the town
after twelve o'clock at night. We'd once or twice, when we'd been out late,
stopped to look at them, and watched the big heavy bullocks and fat cows
staring and starting and slipping all among the lamps and pavements,
with the street all so strange and quiet, and laughed at the notion of
some of the shopkeepers waking up and seeing a couple of hundred wild cattle,
with three or four men behind 'em, shouldering and horning one another,
then rushing past their doors at a hard trot, or breaking into a gallop
for a bit.

Some of these chaps, seeing we was cattle-men and knew most things
in that line, used to open out about where they'd come from,
and what a grand place Gippsland was -- splendid grass country,
rivers that run all the year round, great fattening country;
and snowy mountains at the back, keeping everything cool in the summer.
Some of the mountain country, like Omeo, that they talked a lot of,
seemed about one of the most out-of-the-way places in the world.
More than that, you could get back to old New South Wales
by way of the Snowy River, and then on to Monaro. After that
we knew where we were.