I brought it out sudden-like to Aileen before I could stop myself, but
it was all true. How we were to make the first start we couldn't agree;
but we were bound to make another big touch, and this time the police
would be after us for something worth while. Anyhow, we could take it
easy at the Hollow for a bit, and settle all the ins and outs without
hurrying ourselves.
Our dart now was to get to the Hollow that night some time, and not to
leave much of a track either. Nobody had found out the place yet, and
wasn't going to if we knew. It was too useful a hiding-place to give
away without trouble, and we swore to take all sorts of good care to
keep it secret, if it was to be done by the art of man.
We went up Nulla Mountain the same way as we remembered doing when Jim
and I rode to meet father that time he had the lot of weaners. We kept
wide and didn't follow on after one another so as to make a marked
trail. It was a long, dark, dreary ride. We had to look sharp so as not
to get dragged off by a breast-high bough in the thick country. There
was no fetching a doctor if any one was hurt. Father rode ahead. He knew
the ins and outs of the road better than any of us, though Jim, who had
lived most of his time in the Hollow after he got away from the
police, was getting to know it pretty well. We were obliged to go slow
mostly--for a good deal of the track lay along the bed of a creek, full
of boulders and rocks, that we had to cross ever so many times in a
mile. The sharp-edged rocks, too, overhung low enough to knock your
brains out if you didn't mind.
It was far into the night when we got to the old yard. There it stood,
just as I recollect seeing it the time Jim and I and father branded the
weaners. It had only been used once or twice since. It was patched up a
bit in places, but nobody seemed to have gone next or nigh it for a long
time. The grass had grown up round the sliprails; it was as strange and
forsaken-looking as if it belonged to a deserted station.
As we rode up a man comes out from an angle of the fence and gives a
whistle. We knew, almost without looking, that it was Warrigal. He'd
come there to meet Starlight and take him round some other way. Every
track and short cut there was in the mountains was as easy to him as
the road to George Storefield's was to us. Nulla Mountain was full of
curious gullies and caves and places that the devil himself could hardly
have run a man to ground in, unless he'd lived near it all his life as
Warrigal had. He wasn't very free in showing them to us, but he'd have
made a bridge of his own body any time to let Starlight go safe. So when
they rode away together we knew he was safe whoever might be after us,
and that we should see him in the Hollow some time next day.
We went on for a mile or two farther; then we got off, and turned our
horses loose. The rest of the way we had to do on foot. My horse and
Jim's had got regularly broke into Rocky Flat, and we knew that they'd
go home as sure as possible, not quite straight, but keeping somewhere
in the right direction. As for father he always used to keep a horse
or two, trained to go home when he'd done with him. The pony he rode
to-night would just trot off, and never put his nose to the ground
almost till he got wind of home.
We humped our saddles and swags ourselves; a stiffish load too, but the
night was cool, and we did our best. It was no use growling. It had to
be done, and the sooner the better. It seemed a long time--following
father step by step--before we came to the place where I thought the
cattle were going to be driven over the precipice. Here we pulled up for
a bit and had a smoke. It was a queer time and a queer look-out.
Three o'clock in the morning--the stars in the sky, and it so clear
that we could see Nulla Mountain rising up against it a big black lump,
without sign of tree or rock; underneath the valley, one sea of mist,
and we just agoing to drop into it; on the other side of the Hollow, the
clear hill we called the Sugarloaf. Everything seemed dead, silent, and
solitary, and a rummier start than all, here were we--three desperate
men, driven to make ourselves a home in this lonesome, God-forsaken
place! I wasn't very fanciful by that time, but if the devil had risen
up to make a fourth amongst us I shouldn't have been surprised. The
place, the time, and the men seemed regularly cut out for him and his
mob.
We smoked our pipes out, and said nothing to each other, good or bad.
Then father makes a start, and we follows him; took a goodish while, but
we got down all right, and headed for the cave. When we got there our
troubles were over for a while. Jim struck a match and had a fire going
in no time; there was plenty of dry wood, of course. Then father rolls
a keg out of a hole in the wall; first-rate dark brandy it was, and we
felt a sight better for a good stiff nip all round. When a man's cold
and tired, and hungry, and down on his luck as well, a good caulker of
grog don't do him no harm to speak of. It strings him up and puts him
straight. If he's anything of a man he can stand it, and feel all the
better for it; but it's a precious sight too easy a lesson to learn, and
there's them that can't stop, once they begin, till they've smothered
what brains God Almighty put inside their skulls, just as if they was
to bore a hole and put gunpowder in. No! they wouldn't stop if they were
sure of going to heaven straight, or to hell next minute if they put the
last glass to their lips. I've heard men say it, and knew they meant it.
Not the worst sort of men, either.
We were none of us like that. Not then, anyhow. We could take or leave
it, and though dad could do with his share when it was going, he always
knew what he was about, and could put the peg in any time. So we had
one strongish tot while the tea was boiling. There was a bag of ship
biscuit; we fried some hung beef, and made a jolly good supper. We were
that tired we didn't care to talk much, so we made up the fire last
thing and rolled ourselves in our blankets; I didn't wake till the sun
had been up an hour or more.
I woke first; Jim was fast asleep, but dad had been up a goodish while
and got things ready for breakfast. It was a fine, clear morning;
everything looked beautiful, 'specially to me that had been locked up
away from this sort of thing so long. The grass was thick and green
round the cave, and right up to the big sandstone slabs of the floor,
looking as if it had never been eat down very close. No more it had. It
would never have paid to have overstocked the Hollow. What cattle and
horses they kept there had a fine time of it, and were always in grand
condition.
Opposite where we were the valley was narrow. I could see the sandstone
precipices that walled us in, a sort of yellowish, white colour, all
lighted up with the rays of the morning sun, looking like gold towers
against the heavy green forest timber at the foot of them. Birds were
calling and whistling, and there was a little spring that fell drip,
drip over a rough rock basin all covered with ferns. A little mob of
horses had fed pretty close up to the camp, and would walk up to look
curious-like, and then trot off with their heads and tails up. It was a
pretty enough sight that met my eyes on waking. It made me feel a sort
of false happiness for a time, to think we had such a place to camp in
on the quiet, and call our own, in a manner of speaking.
Jim soon woke up and stretched himself. Then father began, quite
cheerful like--
'Well, boys, what d'ye think of the Hollow again? It's not a bad earth
for the old dog-fox and his cubs when the hounds have run him close.
They can't dig him out here, or smoke him out either. We've no call to
do anything but rest ourselves for a week or two, anyhow; then we must
settle on something and buckle to it more business-like. We've been too
helter-skelter lately, Jim and I. We was beginning to run risks, got
nearly dropped on more nor once.'
There's no mistake, it's a grand thing to wake up and know you've got
nothing to do for a bit but to take it easy and enjoy yourself. No
matter how light your work may be, if it's regular and has to be done
every day, the harness 'll gall somewhere; you get tired in time and
sick of the whole thing.
Jim and I knew well that, bar accidents, we were as safe in the Hollow
as we used to be in our beds when we were boys. We'd searched it through
and through last time, till we'd come to believe that only three or
four people, and those sometimes not for years at a time, had ever been
inside of it. There were no tracks of more.
We could see how the first gang levied; they were different. Every now
and then they had a big drink--'a mad carouse', as the books say--when
they must have done wild, strange things, something like the Spanish
Main buccaneers we'd read about. They'd brought captives with them, too.
We saw graves, half-a-dozen together, in one place. THEY didn't belong
to the band.
We had a quiet, comfortable meal, and a smoke afterwards. Then Jim and I
took a long walk through the Hollow, so as to tell one another what was
in our minds, which we hadn't a chance to do before. Before we'd gone
far Jim pulls a letter out of his pocket and gives it to me.
'It was no use sending it to you, old man, while you was in the jug,'
he says; 'it was quite bad enough without this, so I thought I'd keep it
till we were settled a bit like. Now we're going to set up in business
on our own account you'd best look over your mail.'
I knew the writing well, though I hadn't seen it lately. It was from
her--from Kate Morrison that was. It began--not the way most women
write, like HER, though--
So this is the end of your high and mighty doings, Richard Marston,
passing yourself and Jim off as squatters. I don't blame him--[no, of
course not, nobody ever blamed Jim, or would, I suppose, if he'd burned
down Government House and stuck up his Excellency as he was coming out
of church]--but when I saw in the papers that you had been arrested for
cattle-stealing I knew for the first time how completely Jeanie and I
had been duped.
I won't pretend that I didn't think of the money you were said to have,
and how pleasant it would be to spend some of it after the miserable,
scrambling, skimping life we had lately been used to. But I loved you,
Dick Marston, for YOURSELF, with a deep and passionate love which you
will never know now, which you would scorn and treat lightly, perhaps,
if you did know. You may yet find out what you have lost, if ever you
get out of that frightful gaol.
I was not such a silly fool as to pine and fret over our romance so
cruelly disturbed, though Jeanie was; it nearly broke her heart. No,
Richard, my nature is not of that make. I generally get even with people
who wrong me. I send you a photo, giving a fair idea of myself and my
HUSBAND, Mr. Mullockson. I accepted his offer soon after I saw your
adventures, and those of your friend Starlight, in every newspaper in
the colonies. I did not hold myself bound to live single for your
sake, so did what most women do, though they pretend to act from other
motives, I disposed of myself to the best advantage.
Mr. Mullockson has plenty of money, which is NEARLY everything in this
world, so that I am comfortable and well off, as far as that goes. If
I am not happy that is your fault--your fault, I say, because I am not
able to tear your false image and false self from my thoughts. Whatever
happens to me in the future you may consider yourself to blame for. I
should have been a happy and fairly good woman, as far as women go,
if you had been true, or rather if everything about you had not been
utterly false and despicable.
You think it fortunate after reading this, I daresay, that we are
separated for ever, BUT WE MAY MEET AGAIN, Richard Marston. THEN you may
have reason to curse the day, as I do most heartily, when you first set
eyes on KATE MULLOCKSON.
Not a pleasant letter, by no manner of means. I was glad I didn't get it
while I was eating my heart out under the stifling low roof of the cell
at Nomah, or when I was bearing my load at Berrima. A few pounds more
when the weight was all I could bear and live would have crushed the
heart out of me. I didn't want anything to cross me when I was looking
at mother and Aileen and thinking how, between us, we'd done everything
our worst enemy could have wished us to do. But here, when there was
plenty of time to think over old days and plan for the future, I could
bear the savage, spiteful sound of the whole letter and laugh at the
way she had got out of her troubles by taking up with a rough old fellow
whose cheque-book was the only decent thing about him. I wasn't sorry to
be rid of her either. Since I'd seen Gracey Storefield again every other
woman seemed disagreeable to me. I tore up the letter and threw it away,
hoping I had done for ever with a woman that no man living would ever
have been the better for.
'Glad you take it so quiet,' Jim says, after holding his tongue longer
than he did mostly. 'She's a bad, cold-hearted jade, though she is
Jeanie's sister. If I thought my girl was like her she'd never have
another thought from me, but she isn't, and never was. The worse luck
I've had the closer she's stuck to me, like a little brick as she is.
I'd give all I ever had in the world if I could go to her and say, “Here
I am, Jim Marston, without a penny in the world, but I can look every
man in the face, and we'll work our way along the road of life cheerful
and loving together.” But I CAN'T say it, Dick, that's the devil of
it, and it makes me so wild sometimes that I could knock my brains out
against the first ironbark tree I come across.'
I didn't say anything, but I took hold of Jim's hand and shook it.
We looked in each other's eyes for a minute; there was no call to say
anything. We always understood one another, Jim and I.
As we were safe to stop in the Hollow for long spells at a time we took
a good look over it, as far as we could do on foot. We found a rum sort
of place at the end of a long gully that went easterly from the main
flat. In one way you'd think the whole valley had been an arm of the sea
some time or other. It was a bit like Sydney Harbour in shape, with one
principal valley and no end of small cover and gullies running off from
it, and winding about in all directions. Even the sandstone walls, by
which the whole affair, great and small, was hemmed in, were just like
the cliff about South Head; there were lines, too, on the face of them,
Jim and I made out, just like where the waves had washed marks and
levels on the sea-rock. We didn't trouble ourselves much about that part
of it. Whatever might have been there once, it grew stunning fine grass
now, and there was beautiful clear fresh water in all the creeks that
ran through it.
Well, we rambled up the long, crooked gully that I was talking about
till about half-way up it got that narrow that it seemed stopped by a
big rock that had tumbled down from the top and blocked the path. It was
pretty well grown over with wild raspberries and climbers.
'No use going farther,' says Jim; 'there's nothing to see.'
'I don't know that. Been a track here some time. Let's get round and
see.'
When we got round the rock the track was plain again; it had been well
worn once, though neither foot nor hoof much had been along it for many
a year. It takes a good while to wear out a track in a dry country.
The gully widened out bit by bit, till at last we came to a little
round green flat, right under the rock walls which rose up a couple of
thousand feet above it on two sides. On the flat was an old hut--very
old it seemed to be, but not in bad trim for all that. The roof was of
shingles, split, thick, and wedge shaped; the walls of heavy ironbark
slabs, and there was a stone chimney.
Outside had been a garden; a few rose trees were standing yet, ragged
and stunted. The wallabies had trimmed them pretty well, but we knew
what they were. Been a corn-patch too--the marks where it had been hoed
up were there, same as they used to do in old times when there were more
hoes than ploughs and more convicts than horses and working bullocks in
the country.
'Well, this is a rum start,' says Jim, as we sat down on a log outside
that looked as if it had been used for a seat before. 'Who the deuce
ever built this gunyah and lived in it by himself for years and years?
You can see it was no two or three months' time he done here. There's
the spring coming out of the rock he dipped his water from. The track's
reg'lar worn smooth over the stones leading to it. There was a fence
round this garden, some of the rails lying there rotten enough, but it
takes time for sound hard wood to rot. He'd a stool and table too, not
bad ones either, this Robinson Crusoe cove. No end of manavilins either.
I wonder whether he come here before them first--Government men--chaps
we heard of. Likely he did and died here too. He might have chummed in
with them, of course, or he might not. Perhaps Starlight knows something
about him, or Warrigal. We'll ask them.'
We fossicked about for a while to see if the man who lived so long by
himself in this lonely place had left anything behind him to help us
make out what sort he was. We didn't find much. There was writing on
the walls here and there, and things cut on the fireplace posts. Jim
couldn't make head or tail of them, nor me either.
'The old cove may have left something worth having behind him,' he said,
after staring at the cold hearth ever so long. 'Men like him often leave
gold pieces and jewels and things behind them, locked up in brass-bound
boxes; leastways the story-books say so. I've half a mind to root up the
old hearthstone; it's a thundering heavy one, ain't it? I wonder how he
got it here all by himself.'
'It IS pretty heavy,' I said. 'For all we know he may have had help to
bring it in. We've no time now to see into it; we'd better make tracks
and see if Starlight has made back. We shall have to shape after a bit,
and we may as well see how he stands affected.'
'He'll be back safe enough. There's no pull in being outside now with
all the world chevying after you and only half rations of food and
sleep.'
Jim was right. As we got up to the cave we saw Starlight talking to the
old man and Warrigal letting go the horse. They'd taken their time to
come in, but Warrigal knew some hole or other where they'd hid before
very likely, so they could take it easier than we did the night we left
Rocky Creek.
'Well, boys!' says Starlight, coming forward quite heartily, 'glad to
see you again; been taking a walk and engaging yourselves this fine
weather? Rather nice country residence of ours, isn't it? Wonder how
long we shall remain in possession! What a charm there is in home! No
place like home, is there, governor?'
Dad didn't smile, he very seldom did that, but I always thought he never
looked so glum at Starlight as he did at most people.
'The place is well enough,' he growled, 'if we don't smother it all by
letting our tracks be followed up. We've been dashed lucky so far, but
it'll take us all we know to come in and out, if we've any roadwork on
hand, and no one the wiser.'
'It can be managed well enough,' says Starlight. 'Is that dinner
ever going to be ready? Jim, make the tea, there's a good fellow; I'm
absolutely starving. The main thing is never to be seen together except
on great occasions. Two men, or three at the outside, can stick up any
coach or travellers that are worth while. We can get home one by one
without half the risk there would be if we were all together. Hand me
the corned beef, if you please, Dick. We must hold a council of war by
and by.'
We were smoking our pipes and lying about on the dry floor of the cave,
with the sun coming in just enough to make it pleasant, when I started
the ball.
'We may as well have it out now what lay we're going upon and whether
we're all agreed in our minds TO TURN OUT, and do the thing in the
regular good old-fashioned Sydney-side style. It's risky, of course, and
we're sure to have a smart brush or two; but I'm not going to be jugged
again, not if I know it, and I don't see but what bush-ranging--yes,
BUSH-RANGING, it's no use saying one thing and meaning another--ain't
as safe a game, let alone the profits of it, as mooching about
cattle-duffing and being lagged in the long run all the same.'