“Soft! What are you?
Some villain mountaineers?
I have heard of such.“—_Cymbeline_.
Mrs. Stangrove and Maud were sitting in the drawing-room that morning, a
little silent and distrait, we may confess, when a man’s footstep was
heard on the verandah. “I did not think that Mark would have returned so
soon,” said Maud, going to the French window and looking out. She stood
there for an instant, and then, turning to her sister a face ashen-white
and strangely altered, gasped out a single word—that word of dread,
often of doom, in the far, lone, defenceless Australian
waste—“Bushrangers!” Mrs. Stangrove gave a moaning, half-muffled cry,
and then, obeying the irresistible maternal instinct, rushed into the
adjoining apartment where her children were. At the same moment a tall
man with a revolver raised in his right hand stepped into the room, and
gazed rapidly round with restless eyes, as of one long used to meet with
frequent foes. Behind him, closely following, were three other armed
men, while a fifth was visible in the passage, thus cutting off all
retreat towards the rear.
Maud Stangrove was a girl of more than ordinary firmness of nerve. She
strove hard against the spasmodic terror which the feeling of being
_absolutely in the power_ of lawless and desperate men at first
produced. Rapidly conning over the chances of a rescue, in the event of
the working overseer and his men returning, as she knew they were likely
to do, at an early hour, having been out at the nearest out-station
since sunrise, accompanied by Mark, who had intended when leaving to cut
across to them and inspect their work, she felt the necessity of keeping
cool and temporizing with the enemy.
Steadying her voice with an effort, and facing the intruder with a very
creditable air of unconcern, she said—“What do you want? I think you
have mistaken your way.”
The robber looked at her with a bold glance of admiration, and then,
with an instinctive deference which struggled curiously with his
consciousness of having taken the citadel, made answer—“See here, Miss,
I’m Redcap; dessay you’ve heard of me. You’ve no call to be afeared; but
we’ve come here for them repeating rifles as Mr. Stangrove’s been smart
enough to get up from town.”
“I don’t know anything about them,” said Maud, thankful to remember that
she had not seen lately these unlucky celebrities in the small-arm way,
which, for their marvellous shooting and rapidity of loading, had been a
nine-days’ wonder in the neighbourhood.
“Well,” interposed a black-visaged, down-looking ruffian, who had
ensconced himself in an easy chair, “some of you will have to know about
’em, and look sharp too, or we’ll burn the blessed place down about your
ears.”
“You shut up, Doctor,” said the leader, who seemed, like Lambro, one of
the mildest-mannered men that ever “stuck up mails or fobbed a note.”
“Let me talk to the lady. It’s no use your fencing, Miss, about these
guns; we know all about ’em, and have ’em we will. Mr. Stangrove shot a
bullock with the long one last Saturday. You’d better let us have ’em,
and we’ll clear out.”
Maud was considering whether it would not be safer to “fess” and get rid
of the unwelcome visitors, who, though wonderfully pacific, might not
remain so. A diversion was effected. One of the younger members of the
band suddenly appeared with the baby—the idolized darling of the
household—in his arms.
“Here,” he cried, “I’ve got something as is valuable. I shall stick to
this young ’un to put me in mind of my pore family as I’ve been obliged
to cut away from.”
Mrs. Stangrove, poor lady, had been keeping close with the older
children, flattering herself that this precious infant, then taking the
air in his nurse’s arms, was safe from the marauders. She was speedily
undeceived by the piercing cry which reached her ears, as the affrighted
babe, just old enough to “take notice” of the stranger, proclaimed
distrust of his awkward, though not unkind, dandling.
Rushing in with frantic eagerness, and the “wrathful dove” expression
which the gentlest maternal creature assumes at any “intromitting” with
her young, as old Dugald Dalgetty phrases it, Mrs. Stangrove suddenly
confronted the audacious intruder, and, seizing the child, tore it out
of his arms with so deft a promptitude that the delinquent had no time
for resistance. Looking half startled, half sullen, he stood in the same
position for a moment, with so ludicrous an expression of defeat and
mortification that his companions burst into a fit of unrestrained
laughter, while Mrs. Stangrove, in the reaction from her unaccustomed
ferocity, clasped the child to her bosom in a paroxysm of tears.
“This here’s all very well,” said Redcap, “but we didn’t come for
foolery. If these rifles ain’t turned up in five minutes you’ll be sorry
for it. If some of ’em gets to the brandy, Miss,” here he lowered his
voice and looked significantly at Maud, “there’s no saying what will
happen. Better deal with us while we’re in a good temper.”
Maud believed that the coveted weapons were somewhere upon the premises,
although she had spoken truly at the first demand when she averred that
she was ignorant of their precise locality. She was aware that a moment
might change the mood of the robbers from one of amused toleration to
that of reckless brutality. Not wholly ignorant of the terrible legends,
still whispered low and with bated breath, of wrongs irrevocable
suffered by defenceless households, her resolution was quickly taken.
“Jane,” she said to Mrs. Stangrove, who, helpless and unnerved, was
still sobbing hysterically, “if you know where these guns are tell me at
once, and I will go for them. It can’t be helped. These men have behaved
fairly, and as we can neither fight nor run away, we must give up our
money-bags, or what they consider an equivalent. Where are the rifles?”
“Oh, what will Mark say?” moaned out the distracted wife. “If he were
only here I should not care. And yet, perhaps, it’s better as it is. If
they do not hurt the dear children I don’t care what they take. You know
best. The rifles are in Mark’s dressing-room, in the shower-bath.”
Maud went out, and presently reappeared with the beautiful American
repeaters, one of which had the desirable peculiarity of being able to
discharge sixteen cartridges in as many seconds, if needful; the other
was a light and extremely handy Snider—“a tarnation smart
shooting-iron,” as one of the station hands, who hailed from the Great
Republic, had admiringly expressed himself.
Redcap’s eyes glistened as he possessed himself of the
“sixteen-shooter,” and handed the Snider to the Doctor.
“All’s well that ends well,” growled that worthy, “we’ll be a match for
all the blessed traps between here and Sydney with these here tools; but
for two pins I’d put a match in every gunyah on the place, just to learn
Stangrove not to be in such a hurry to run in a mob of pore fellers as
had got tired of being messed about by those infernal troopers.”
“You’ll just do what I tell you, Doctor,” said Redcap, savagely, “and if
I catch one of you burning or shooting without orders he’ll have to
settle with me. Hallo! it can’t be dinner-time.”
This last observation was called forth by the appearance of the
parlour-maid with the table-cloth and a tray. She was a buxom country
girl, without any of that hyper-sensitiveness of the nervous system
common to town domestics. A bushranger to her was simply an exaggerated
“traveller,” and nothing more. One o’clock p.m. having arrived, it did
not occur to her that the family would choose to omit the important
midday meal on account of visitors, however unwelcome. She proceeded,
therefore, with perfect coolness to lay the cloth, and observing no sign
of objection from Maud, presently brought in the dishes, and set the
chairs as usual. Maud, thinking that the less fear they showed the
better it would be for them, called the children, and motioned to Mrs.
Stangrove to take her accustomed place. Simultaneously, Miss Ethel, a
quiet little monkey of nine years, being extremely hungry, then and
there recited the customary grace, praying God to “relieve the wants of
others, and to make them truly thankful for what they were about to
receive.”
Maud afterwards confessed that it cost her a strong effort to repress a
smile as she noted the look of undisguised astonishment which came over
the faces of Redcap and his men, who probably had not heard for many a
year, if ever, that simple benediction.
The Doctor recovered himself first. “I feel confoundedly hungry,” said
he; “I suppose we may as well take a snack too.”
“Then come along with me to the kitchen,” said the maid, promptly, with
the most matter-of-fact air, opening the door of the passage.
The men stared for a moment as if disposed for equal privileges in the
region of communism which they now morally inhabited. But the old
instinct was not entirely overpowered, and with one look at Maud’s rigid
countenance and the pale face of Mrs. Stangrove, Redcap followed the
girl, and signed to his comrades to do likewise.
At this moment one of the bed-room doors opened, and a man entered the
room, dressed in a full suit of black. His hair shone with pomatum, and
he looked something between a lay reader and a provincial footman.
“Look out,” roared the Doctor, “perhaps there’s more of ’em coming,” as
he raised his revolver.
“Come, none of that, Doctor,” said the new-comer; “don’t you never see
nothin’ but a cove’s clothes?”
A roar of laughter from the others and the returned Redcap apprised him
of his mistake. It was the youngest member of their own band, who, being
of a restless disposition, had managed to find his way to the spare
room, where he had coolly appropriated a combination suit of John
Redgrave’s, and had further anointed himself with a pot of pomatum,
which did not belong to that gentleman. This episode improved the
spirits both of captors and captives, and, hustling one another like
school-boys, the whole gang made their way into the kitchen, where, to
judge from the sounds of laughter that issued therefrom, they enjoyed
themselves much more than would have been the case in the dining-room.
In about half an hour Maud had the inexpressible gratification of seeing
them mount and make off steadily along the road which led “up the
river.”
When they were fairly off Maud felt symptoms of having taxed nature
severely. She turned deadly pale as she threw herself upon the sofa,
covering her face with her hands, while her whole frame shook with
convulsive sobs, as she tried with her full strength of will to control
the tendency to “the sad laugh that cannot be repressed.” However, as
chiefly happens in those feminine temperaments where the reasoning
powers are stronger than the emotional, she succeeded, and bestowed all
her regained energy to the support and consolation of her sister-in-law.
While these wonderful things were happening, John Redgrave was
peacefully riding along the up river road, thinking of the manifold
perfections of his divinity, and little dreaming that she was at that
very moment a distressed damsel, in the power of traitors and
_faitours_.
“What a lovely morning!” soliloquized he, “not so warm as it has been; a
breeze too. How peaceful everything looks! Really, this is _not_ such a
fearful climate as I thought it at first. With a decent house, and one
fair spirit to be his minister, a fellow might gracefully glide through
existence here for a few years—that is, if he were making lots of money.
It would be almost too uneventful, that’s the worst of it—nothing ever
happens here. Hallo! what a pace the Sergeant is coming at, and old
Kearney too!”
This exclamation was called forth by the sudden appearance of the whole
police force which was thought necessary for the protection of a
district about a hundred miles square. Jack knew their figures, and
indeed their horses, the Sergeant’s gray and the trooper’s curby-hocked
chestnut, to well to be mistaken. They raced up to him, and, pulling up
short, both addressed him at once—a trifle out of breath.
“Have you seen any travellers on horseback, Mr. Redgrave?” asked the
Sergeant.
“If it’s purshuing them ye are, ye’re going right wrong,” blurted out
trooper Kearney.
“Seen who? Pursuing what?” demanded Jack. “Why should I pursue anybody?”
“Then you haven’t heard,” said the Sergeant.
“The divil a hear,” interrupted Private Kearney; “sure he doesn’t look
like it, and he ridin’ along the road as peaceful as if there wasn’t a
bushranger betuxt here and Adelaide.”
“Bushrangers!” quoth Jack, fully aroused. “I’d forgotten all about them,
and near here? Where were they seen last, Stewart?”
“Constable Kearney, will you oblige me by keeping silence, and falling
to the rear,” said the Sergeant, majestically, while he proceeded to
enlighten Jack as to the probable whereabouts of the gang “from
information received.”
“As far as I can make out, sir, and if that scoundrel of a mailman
hasn’t put me on the wrong track, they were at Mr. Stangrove’s Ban Ban
out-station last night, and have either gone down the river or over to
his head-station to-day.”
“His head-station! His head-station!” echoed Jack, in wild tones of
astonishment—“no! surely not!”
“Very likely indeed, _I_ think,” said the Sergeant, “it’s just about
their dart from Ban Ban—they may be there now.”
“What in the name of all the fiends are we wasting time here for, then?”
answered he, in a voice so hoarse and strange that the Sergeant looked
narrowly at him to note whether he had been drinking, all forms of
eccentricity on the Warroo being referable, in his opinion, founded upon
long experience, to different stages of intoxication. “Thank God, I
brought my revolver with me—come on, there’s a good fellow.”
Sergeant Stewart had not, indeed, done more than slacken his pace for
the time necessary to restore the wind of his horses, pretty well
expended by a three-mile heat. He was a cool, plucky, good-looking
fellow, and no bad sample of a crack non-commissioned officer of
Australian police, a body of men inferior to none in the world for
general light cavalry. He was as distinguished-looking in his way as his
old namesake, Bothwell, in _Old Mortality_, whom he resembled in more
points than one.
By the time Jack had concluded his sentence, his blood-hackney was
pulling his arms off, neck and neck with the Sergeant’s wiry gray, while
Mr. Kearney and the doubtful chestnut were powdering away behind, at no
great distance.
“It’s lucky we met you,” said the Sergeant; “there are five of them, I
hear; three of us are a pretty fair match for the scoundrels.”
“I see you have your rifles,” said Jack; “you don’t generally carry
them.”
“No; but this time we thought we were out for a week. I only saw the
mailman, who gave me the office, early this morning, and came here as
hard as we could split. Here comes another recruit, I suppose—by George!
it’s Mr. Stangrove.”
So it proved. That gentleman, as unsuspicious as Jack himself, was
cantering along a bush track which led into the main “frontage road” at
right angles.
“Halloa, Redgrave! turned round since I left you, and our gallant police
force too. What’s the row—horse-stealers?”
“Worse than that, I’m afraid, old fellow,” said Jack, going close up.
“Redcap and his lot have been seen not far off.”
He stopped—for the sudden spasm of pain which contracted Stangrove’s
features was bad to see.
“Good God!” he said, at length, gnawing his set lip; “my poor wife will
be frightened to death, and Maud! Let us ride—pray God we are not too
late.”
Little was said. The horses, all tolerably well-bred, and possessing
that capacity for sustaining a high rate of speed for hours together
peculiar to “dry-country horses,” held on, mile after mile, until they
sighted a large reed-bed, which occupied a circular flat or bend of the
river.
“By gad! here they are,” said the sergeant, “camped on the bank! I can
see their saddles; the horses are feeding in the reed-bed. Now if we can
get up pretty close before they see us we have them.”
“All right,” said Jack, with the cheerfulness of a man whose spirits are
raised by the near approach of danger. “You and Mr. Stangrove get round
that clump of gums, and take them in the rear; Kearney and I will sneak
along close to the bank, till we’re near enough to charge. I’ll bet a
tenner I have the saddles first. Then they are helpless.”
“I think you wouldn’t make a bad general, sir,” said the Sergeant. “Mr.
Stangrove, I think we can’t do better.”
Stangrove handled his revolver impatiently, and, with something between
a groan and a reply, rode silently on.
“Now, see here, Mr. Redgrave,” said Pat Kearney—a _rusé_ old veteran,
who had put “the bracelets” upon many a horse and cattle stealer, and
was not now about to have his first fray with bushrangers—“if we can
snake on ’em before they have time to take to thim unlucky rade-bids—my
heavy curse on thim for hiding villains—we have thim safe. They may fire
a shot, but they’re unsignified crathers, not like Bin Hall or Morgan.”
“And why shouldn’t these fellows fight?” asked Jack.
“Ye see, now, it’s this a way. Just keep under the bank near thim big
oaks—sure that’s iligant. ’Tis a great ornamint to the force ye’d make
intirely. Well, as I tould ye, that spalpeen of a Redcap—more by token I
put a handful of slugs in him once—has never killed any one yet—nor the
others—d’ye see now?”
“I don’t see, Kearney, that it makes much difference—they’re outlaws.”
“Ah! but there’s a dale of differ between men that’s fighting with a
halter round their necks, and these half-baked divils that hasn’t more
than fifteen years’ gaol to fear, with maybe a touch of Berrima, at the
outside.”
“I understand, then; you think that they are more likely to give in
after the first flutter than if they were sure to be hanged when
caught.”
“By coorse they will; why wouldn’t they? I knew Redcap when he’d think
more of duffing a red heifer than all the money in the country. If he
seen me, I believe he’d hold up his hands, from habit like.”
“Then you don’t think it a good plan to make bush-ranging the same as
murder, and to hang a fellow directly he turns out?”
“Thim that wanted that law made didn’t have their families living on the
Warroo,” said the old trooper, sturdily. “How can a couple of men like
us thravel and purtect a district as big as Great Britain? And what
would turn a raw lot like these devils let loose quicker than a
blundering, over-severe law? By the mortial, they see us. Hould on, sir,
and we’ll charge them together, like Wellington and the Proosians at
Waterloo.”
The robbers had a good strategical position. Their base of operations
was the reed-bed, a labyrinth of cane-like stalks which met overhead in
the narrow paths worn by the feet of the stock. They were, however,
divided in party and in purpose. Two of them had been detailed to fetch
up the horses grazing in the reed-bed, and the remainder, having just
sighted Redgrave and Constable Kearney, stood to their arms with
sufficient determination.
On the very edge of the river bank, beneath which the stream ran in a
deeper channel than ordinary, were the five saddles of the gang. They
had evidently dismounted at this spot, and, after unsaddling, had gone
to the edge of the reed brake, where an unusually shady tree afforded
them an inviting lounge.
Thus it chanced that Jack’s keen eyes discovered the state of affairs,
as he and Kearney prepared to rival Waterloo, on a necessarily limited
scale.
“Look here, Kearney,” said he, as they commenced the grand charge, “I
mean to throw those saddles into the river. The rascals are a good
thirty yards from them. They can’t do much without horses. So you blaze
away, and cover me as well as you can.”
“It’s a great move intirely—but watch that divil Redcap; ’tis a mighty
nate shot he is—and you’ll be out in the open—bad cess to it.”
Jack’s blood was up, and he did not care two straws for all the Redcaps
and revolvers in Saltbushdom. Racing frantically for the accoutrements,
he jumped off, and emptied his revolver, save one barrel, at the enemy.
Kearney, a cool and experienced warrior, drew off some little distance
to the right, and opened business on his own account, not only with his
revolver, but with his breach-loading rifle, while his trained horse
stood as steady as a Woolwich gunner. Jack, stooping down, coolly threw
one saddle after another into the swirling current, where they were
swept off before the very eyes of the brigands. As he stood upright,
after hearing the “ping” of more than one bullet unpleasantly close, he
felt a sharp blow—an electric throb—in his left arm, and realized the
fact that a bullet had passed through the muscles near the shoulder.
Inwardly congratulating himself that his right arm was unharmed, Jack
drew himself up, and, facing the dropping shots which still hissed
angrily around him, his eye fell upon the redoubtable Redcap, who, rifle
in hand, had evidently been trying the range of Stangrove’s late
purchase in a manner not contemplated by that gentleman. Jack swung
round, and lifting his revolver, as if at gallery practice, pulled the
trigger with that deadly confidence of aim which some men say is never
experienced save in snipe-shooting or man-shooting. Bar accidents, the
career of William Crossbrand, otherwise Redcap, was ended. Not so,
however, was he to be sped. There had been an old forcing-yard built at
the spot for the purpose of swimming cattle and horses over the river. A
few straggling posts were left. Behind one of these the robber adroitly
slipped, and the bullet buried itself in the massive and twisted timber,
just on a level with Mr. Redcap’s unharmed breast.
“Sure it was the greatest murder in the world,” said Mr. Kearney,
afterwards, with apparent incongruousness. “’Twas a dead man he was,
only for that blagguard of a post.”
At this moment the Sergeant and Stangrove—who had been waiting till the
two other outlaws came up, driving their hobbled horses before them—made
a rush, which was the signal for an advance in line of the attacking
party. A few scattered shots were exchanged on both sides. The shooting
(let any of my readers try what practice they can make, with the best
revolvers, from moving horses) was not anything to boast of. It was soon
evident that the bushrangers were not going to fight to the last gasp.
They began to slacken fire, and show signs of capitulation. Perhaps the
most dramatic incident occurred just before the surrender. The Sergeant
had ridden up, neck and neck, with Stangrove to their partially
entrenched position, and had exhausted his ammunition in a sharp
exchange, when the Doctor stepped forward from behind a tree, and took
deliberate aim at him with the Snider.
There was no time to reload. Things looked critical. Stangrove and the
others were engaged on their own account; but the Sergeant was equal to
the situation; he fell back upon the moral force in which he so
enormously excelled his antagonist. Raising his hand in a threatening
attitude, and drawing himself up as if on parade, he fixed his stern
eyes upon the audacious criminal and roared out—
“You infernal scoundrel, would you dare to shoot _me_?”
It was a strange and characteristic spectacle. The handsome, soldierly,
comparatively refined man-at-arms, sitting upon his horse, affording a
perfectly fair mark; the half-sullen, half-irresolute criminal, with the
power of life and death in his wavering hands; but the mental pressure
was too great. The old reverence for the representative of the Law was
not all uprooted. A host of doubts and dismal visions of dock and judge,
and manacled limbs, and the Sergeant sternly implacable, “reading him
up” before a crowded court, rose before his overcharged brain. The
conflict was too intense. With a muttered oath he flung down the
historic Snider, and stood with outstretched hands, which the alert
officer of police immediately enclosed in the gyves of the period.
“You’ve acted like a sensible chap,” said Stewart, patronizingly, as the
handcuffs clicked with the closing snap. “I’m not sure that you won’t
get off light. You have had the luck not to have killed anybody that I
know of since you turned out.”
About the same time Mr. Redcap and the other semi-desperadoes had
lowered their flags to Stangrove, his late guest, and Constable Kearney.
This last warrior had, like his superior officer, lost no time in
securing the prisoners. Four pairs of handcuffs were available for the
elder men. The youngest brigand had his elbows buckled together behind
his back with a stirrup-leather.
“Bedad! ye’re a great arr-my intirely,” said Mr. Kearney, complacently.
“Sure it’s kilt and murthered I thought we’d all be with a lot of fine
young men like yees forenint us. But the Docther there hadn’t the heart
to rub out the Sergeant; ’tis the polite man he always was.”
“Well, they say taking to the bush is a short life and a merry one,”
grumbled out Redcap in a kind of Surrey-side tragedy growl. “I know our
time’s been short, and a dashed long way from merry. I’m thankful we
ain’t shed any blood—leastways not killed any cove as I knows of.” Here
he looked at Jack’s wounded arm, the blood from which had considerably
altered the hue of his shooting-jacket.
“Oh! the divil a hanging match there’ll be, if that’s what ye’re
thinking of,” said Kearney. “Sure when they didn’t hang Frank Gardiner
why would they honour the likes of ye with a rope, and Jack Ketch, and a
parson? Cock ye up with hanging indeed! Ye’ll be picking oakum or
chipping freestone, or learning to make shoes and mats, ten years from
now.”
“You have been at my station, I see by the rifles,” said Stangrove; “was
that all you took?”
“Nothing else, Mr. Stangrove,” said Redcap, humbly, “as I’m a living
man. We’d heard so much about them—that the big one could carry a mile
and shoot all day—that we was bound to have ’em. But we done no harm,
and the ladies wasn’t much frightened—not the young lady anyhow.”
“It’s lucky for you they were not,” said Stangrove, huskily; “and it may
serve you something at your trial. Sergeant, what are you going to do
with the prisoners? will you bring them to Juandah to-night?”
“No, sir, I propose to make straight for the gaol at Barrabri; we’ll get
to the ‘Mailman’s Arms’ some time before to-morrow morning. It’s the
first halt we shall make; so step out, you fellows. The sooner we get to
Barrabri the sooner you’ll be comfortably in gaol, where you’ll have
nothing to think of till the Quarter Sessions.”
“Good-bye, Sergeant. Good-bye, Kearney. Redgrave, you had better come
home with me and get that arm seen to. By the way, Sergeant, leave word
at the ‘Mailman’s Arms’ to send on Doctor Bateman, if he’s anywhere
about.”
“So far so good,” said Jack, as they turned their horses’ heads towards
Juandah. “They were not a very terrific set of ruffians, and had
evidently not bound themselves by a dark and bloody oath never to be
taken alive.”
“The sharpest shooting seems to have come your way,” said Stangrove,
noticing that Jack’s face was growing pale. “I heard a bullet or two
whistle near me; but I believe they were sick of their life and anxious
to yield decently. I feel mercifully inclined towards them, inasmuch as
I believe they let us off cheap at Juandah; whereas, if it had been one
of the old gangs——”
“Here we are,” said Jack, as they reined up at the stable door. “Do you
know I feel very queer.” Here he dismounted, and moving with some
difficulty, that mortal paleness overspread his face which, once seen,
is indelibly associated with real or temporary lifelessness, and down
went Mr. John Redgrave, helpless as a new-born babe, or a young lady
menaced by a black beetle.
Stangrove let go his horse, and raised his prostrate guest in his arms
(and a most awfully heavy burden be found him) when out rushed Mrs.
Stangrove and Maud.
“Oh, my darling, we have had the bushrangers here, the horrid men; they
took both the rifles; and one of them took dear baby in his arms and
frightened me to death. Have you seen them? And who is that? Why, it’s
Mr. Redgrave. Is he wounded?”
“He was hit through the arm, but he is not desperately wounded. He lost
some blood and fainted. Oh, you’re coming to; that’s right; sit up, old
man, and we’ll soon have you in bed.”
Maud had come forward with a half-cry parting her lips, while her
widely-opened eyes were expressive of pained yet warmest sympathy. She
could not trust herself to speak, but, kneeling beside the insensible
form, bathed Jack’s face with her handkerchief dipped in water, with a
woman’s ready wit, and, loosening his neckerchief, watched with deepest
earnestness the first faint signs of returning life.
“’Pon my word,” said Jack, as he sat up and stared rather wildly around
him, “I feel awfully ashamed of myself to tumble down and give trouble
all from a scratch like this. But I suppose it has bled and Sangrado-ed
one a bit. It will soon pass off.”
“You have been fighting for us, Mr. Redgrave,” said Maud, with
involuntary tenderness in every tone of her voice; “and we must not be
ungrateful. Try if you can walk inside now. Lean on me. I am ever so
strong, I can tell you.”
Jack did as he was bid, and felt it necessary to avail himself of the
rude strength of which Miss Stangrove boasted. Without any great loss of
time he found himself on a couch in the spare room, where, with the aid
of Mr. and Mrs. Stangrove, he was turned into an interesting invalid,
with his arm bound up, pending the arrival of Dr. Bateman.
Part of the evening was spent by the household in his bedroom, and a
very pleasant evening it was. Mrs. Stangrove was gravely happy, but
inclined to be tearful when recurring to the dear children. Maud and her
brother took the humorous side of the adventure, and Jack laughed till
his arm ached at Maud’s description of the appearance of the younger
bushranger as he turned out in part of Jack’s raiment, and the remainder
as left by a travelling agent for an orphan asylum.
“‘All’s well that ends well,’” said Stangrove. “I shall not have the
same anxious feeling every time the dogs bark now. It might easily have
been worse; and, taking them as bushrangers, a decenter lot of fellows I
never wish to meet.”
Dr. Bateman came next morning, having fortunately looked in at the
‘Mailman’s Arms’ on his way in from a back block, whither he had been
called to set a stockman’s leg, broken only the week before. Hearing of
the casualty awaiting him at Juandah, he came on best pace, making
running with his wiry iron-legged mustang from the start. The doctor,
who had in a general way to minister to the indispositions and accidents
of the population of a district about a hundred and fifty miles long and
a hundred broad, required to possess the constitutional qualities of his
favourite mare. Most of them he did possess, thinking as little of a
ride of a hundred miles in a day and a half as she did of carrying him.
“So you managed to get hit, Mr. Redgrave?” quoth he, in a loud cheery
voice, bustling in after breakfast. “Infernal scoundrels—never knew such
a gang. _Never_ in my life. Worst lot that have taken the bush since old
Donohoe’s time.”
“But, doctor,” protested two or three voices in a breath, “you surely
mistake—they——”
“What I say I stick to,” interrupted the doctor, with a twinkle in his
shrewd gray eye. “Worst gang I ever knew—_for a medical man_. Why, you
are, my dear sir, the only wounded man in the whole district. I’m
ashamed of them—the country’s going to destruction. No energy among the
natives.”
“Oh, that’s it,” said Stangrove; “I was going to stand up for my friend,
the enemy—Mr. Redcap and his merry men; but from your point of view they
did behave disgracefully; not a patch upon Morgan, or the Clarkes, or
even the virtuous and politically celebrated Frank Gardiner. What do you
think of your patient, doctor?”
“That he is in very good quarters. Pulse marks quicker time to-day than
yesterday. Slight touch of fever, only natural; arm inflamed and
painful. A week’s quiet, not a day less, will set him right. Would have
been a very pretty case had bullet perforated the humerus. As it is,
merely amounts to laceration of muscles, minor vessels, and nerves.”
“You’ll stay to-night, doctor, of course?” asked Stangrove.
“No, must go after lunch; have to ride down the river as far as Emu
Reach. Man drowned last night—inquest.”
“How was that?”
“Oh, shepherd, of course; frightful amount of lunacy among them. Poor
old Pott Quartsley got a great fright last week up Din Din. He went into
a shepherd’s hut at dusk and saw him standing just in front of the door.
‘What are you staring at me like that for, you old fool?’ he said. Gave
him a slight push. The shepherd turned half round and slid into the same
posture, silently, ‘Great God!’ said Quartsley, rushing frantically out,
‘what is all this?’”
“And what was it?” asked Stangrove.
“Why, the man _had hanged himself_ the day before with his bridle-rein
fastened to the tie-beam. His feet just touched the ground, and his hat
was on his head, so that he looked, in the half-light, exactly like a
man standing upright. It had a great effect on old Quartsley.”
“What direction will the result take?”
“That of fencing, I believe. Says he can’t afford to keep expensive
luxuries like shepherds any longer. That they’re extravagances are sure
to injure the finest property—the soundest constitution in the long run.
Says he shall repent, economize, and fence—for the future.”
“Bravo!” said Jack, a little feebly; “if old Quartsley begins to fence
you won’t be left behind, Stangrove?”
“I said two years,” answered he, “and in two years I’ll consider the
question, not an hour before that time. In the interval don’t you excite
yourself. The doctor and I are going to the men’s hut. I’ll send Maud
with some cold tea for you.”