'We done that job to rights if we never done another, eh, lad?' says
father, reaching out for a coal to put in his pipe.
'Seems like it,' I said. 'There'll be a deuce of a bobbery about it. We
shan't be able to move for a bit, let alone clear out.'
'We'll show 'em a trick or two yet,' says dad. I could see he'd had a
tot, early as it was. 'I wonder how them chaps got on? But we'll hear
soon.'
'How shall we hear anything? Nobody'll be mad enough to show out of here
for a bit.'
'I could get word here,' says father, 'if there was a police barrack on
the top of Nulla Mountain. I've done it afore, and I can do it again.'
'Well, I hope it won't be long, for I'm pretty full up of this
staying-at-home business in the Hollow. It's well enough for a bit, but
it's awful slow when you've too much of it.'
'It wouldn't be very slow if we was all grabbed and tried for our lives,
Mr. Dick Marston. Would ye like that better for a change?' says the old
man, showing his teeth like a dog that's making up his mind to have ye
and don't see where he's to get first bite. 'You leave the thing to them
as knows more than you do, or you'll find yourself took in, and that
precious sharp.'
'You'll find your pals, Burke and Moran, and their lot will have their
turn first,' I said, and with that I walked off, for I saw the old man
had been drinking a bit after his night's work, and that always started
his temper the wrong way. There was no doing anything with him then,
as I knew by long experience. I was going to ask him where he'd put the
gold, but thought it best to leave that for some other time.
By and by, when we all turned out and had some breakfast, we took a bit
of a walk by ourselves and talked it over. We could hardly think it was
all done and over.
'The gold escort stuck up. Fourteen thousand ounces of gold taken.
Sergeant Hawkins shot dead. The robbers safe off with their booty.'
This is the sort of thing that we were sure to see in all the papers. It
would make a row and no mistake. It was the first time such a thing had
been thought of, much less carried out 'to rights', as father said,
'in any of the colonies.' We had the five thousand ounces of gold, safe
enough, too. That was something; whether we should be let enjoy it, or
what chance we had of getting right away out of the country, was quite
another matter. We were all sorry for Sergeant Hawkins, and would have
been better pleased if he'd been only wounded like the others. But these
sorts of things couldn't be helped. It was the fortune of war; his luck
this time, ours next. We knew what we had to expect. Nothing would make
much difference. 'As well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.' We were up to
our necks in it now, and must fight our way out the best way we could.
Bar any man betraying the secret of the Hollow we might be safe for
years to come, as long as we were not shot or taken in fair fight. And
who was to let out the secret? No one but ourselves had the least notion
of the track or where it led to, or of such a place as the Hollow being
in the colony. Only us five were in possession of the secret. We never
let any of these other men come near, much less to it. We took good care
never to meet them within twenty miles of it. Father was a man that,
even when he was drunk, never let out what he didn't want other people
to know. Jim and I and Starlight were not likely to blab, and Warrigal
would have had his throat cut sooner than let on about anything that
might be against Starlight, or that he told him not to do.
We had good reason, then, to think ourselves safe as long as we had such
a place to make for whenever we were in danger or had done a stroke.
We had enough in gold and cash to keep us comfortable in any other
country--provided we could only get there. That was the rub. When we'd
got a glass or two in our heads we thought it was easy enough to get
across country, or to make away one by one at shearing time, disguised
as swagsmen, to the coast. But when we thought it over carefully in the
mornings, particularly when we were a bit nervous after the grog had
died out of us, it seemed a rather blue look-out.
There was the whole countryside pretty thick with police stations,
where every man, from the sergeant to the last-joined recruit, knew
the height, size, colour of hair, and so on of every one of us. If a
suspicious-looking man was seen or heard of within miles the telegraph
wires could be set to work. He could be met, stopped, searched, and
overhauled. What chance would any of us have then?
'Don't flatter yourselves, my boy,' Starlight said, when we'd got the
length of thinking how it was to be done, 'that there's any little
bit of a chance, for a year or two at any rate, of getting away. Not a
kangaroo rat could hop across from one scrub to another if there was
the least suspicion upon him without being blocked or run into. Jim, old
man, I'm sorry for you, but my belief is we're quartered here for a year
or two certain, and the sooner we make up our minds to it the better.'
Here poor old Jim groaned. 'Don't you think,' he said, quite timid-like,
'that about shearing-time a man might take his chance, leading an old
horse with a swag on, as if he wanted to get shearing in some of the big
down-the-river sheds?'
'Not a bit of it,' says Starlight. 'You're such a good-looking,
upstanding chap that you're safe to be pulled up and made answer for
yourself before you'd get fifty miles. If you rode a good horse they'd
think you were too smart-looking for a regular shearer, and nail you at
once.'
'But I'd take an old screw with a big leg,' pleaded Jim. 'Haven't I
often seen a cove walking and leading one just to carry his blankets and
things?'
'Then they'd know a chap like you, full of work and a native to boot,
ought to have a better turn-out--if it wasn't a stall. So they'd have
you for that.'
'But there's Isaac Lawson and Campbelltown. You've seen them. Isaac's an
inch taller than me, and the same cut and make. Why shouldn't they shop
them when they're going shearing? They're square enough, and always was.
And Campbelltown's a good deal like Dick, beard and all.'
'Well, I'll bet you a new meerschaum that both men are arrested on
suspicion before shearing. Of course they'll let them go again; but,
you mark my words, they'll be stopped, as well as dozens of others. That
will show how close the search will be.'
'I don't care,' says Jim, in his old, obstinate way, which he never put
on except very seldom. 'I'll go in a month or two--police or no police.
I'll make for Melbourne if there was an army of soldiers between me and
Jeanie.'
We had to settle where the gold was to be hid. After a lot of talk we
agreed to keep one bag in a hole in the side of the wall of the cave,
and bury the others in the place where we'd found old Mr. Devereux's
box. His treasure had laid many a year safe and sound without anybody
touching it, and we thought ours might do the same. Besides, to find it
they must get into the Hollow first. So we packed it out bag by bag, and
made an ironbark coffin for it, and buried it away there, and put some
couch-grass turfs on it. We knew they'd soon grow up, and nobody could
tell that it hadn't always been covered up the same as the rest of the
old garden.
It felt pretty hard lines to think we shouldn't be able to get away from
this lonely place after the life we'd led the last year; but Starlight
wasn't often wrong, and we came to the same way of thinking ourselves
when we looked at it all round, steady and quiet like.
We'd been a week or ten days all by ourselves, horse-breaking, fishing,
and shooting a bit, thinking how strange it was that we should have more
than 20,000 Pounds in gold and money and not be able to do anything with
it, when dad, sudden like, said he'd go out himself and get some of the
newspapers, and perhaps a letter or two if any came.
Starlight laughed at him a bit for being foolhardy, and said we should
hear of his being caught and committed for trial. 'Why, they'll know
the dog,' says he, 'and make him give evidence in court. I've known that
done before now. Inspector Merlin nailed a chap through his dog.'
Father grinned. 'I know'd that case--a sheep-stealing one. They wanted
to make out Brummy was the man as owned the dorg--a remarkable dorg he
was, too, and had been seen driving the sheep.'
'Well, what did the dog do? Identify the prisoner, didn't he?'
'Well, the dashed fool of a coolie did. Jumps up as soon as he was
brought into court, and whines and scratches at the dock rails and
barks, and goes on tremenjus, trying to get at Brummy.'
'How did his master like it?'
'Oh! Brummy? He looked as black as the ace of spades. He'd have made it
hot for that dorg if he could ha' got at him. But I suppose he forgived
him when he came out.'
'Why should he?'
'Because the jury fetched him in guilty without leaving the box, and the
judge give him seven years. You wouldn't find this old varmint a-doin'
no such foolishness as that.'
Here he looks at Crib, as was lyin' down a good way off, and not letting
on to know anything. He saw father's old mare brought up, though, and
saddled, and knowed quite well what that meant. He never rode her unless
he was going out of the Hollow.
'I believe that dog could stick up a man himself as well as some fellows
we know,' says Starlight, 'and he'd do it, too, if your father gave him
the word.'
. . . . .
While we were taking it easy, and except for the loneliness of it as
safe as if we had been out of the country altogether, Moran and the
other fellows hadn't quite such a good time of it. They were hunted from
pillar to post by the police, who were mad to do something to meet
the chaff that was always being cast up to them of having a lot of
bush-rangers robbing and shooting all over the country and not being
able to take them. There were some out-of-the-way places enough in the
Weddin Mountains, but none like the Hollow, where they could lie quiet
and untroubled for weeks together, if they wanted. Besides, they
had lost their gold by their own foolishness in not having better
pack-horses, and hadn't much to carry on with, and it's not a life that
can be worked on the cheap, I can tell you, as we often found out. Money
comes easy in our line, but it goes faster still, and a man must never
be short of a pound or two to chuck about if he wants to keep his
information fresh, and to have people working for him night and day with
a will.
So they had some every-day sort of work cut out to keep themselves
going, and it took them all their time to get from one part of the
country where they were known to some other place where they weren't
expected. Having out-and-out good hacks, and being all of them chaps
that had been born in the bush and knew it like a book, it was wonderful
how they managed to rob people at one place one day, and then be at some
place a hundred miles off the next. Ever so many times they came off,
and they'd call one another Starlight and Marston, and so on, till the
people got regularly dumbfoundered, and couldn't tell which of the gang
it was that seemed to be all over the country, and in two places at the
same time. We used to laugh ourselves sometimes, when we'd hear tell
that all the travellers passing Big Hill on a certain day were 'stuck up
by Wall's gang and robbed.' Every man Jack that came along for hours
was made to stand behind a clump of trees with two of the gang guarding
them, so as the others couldn't see them as they came up. They all had
to deliver up what they'd got about 'em, and no one was allowed to stir
till sundown, for fear they should send word to the police. Then the
gang went off, telling them to stay where they were for an hour or else
they'd come back and shoot them.
This would be on the western road, perhaps. Next day a station on the
southern road, a hundred and twenty miles off, would be robbed by the
same lot. Money and valuables taken away, and three or four of the best
horses. Their own they'd leave behind in such a state that any one could
see how far and fast they'd been ridden.
They often got stood to, when they were hard up for a mount, and it was
this way. The squatters weren't alike, by any manner of means, in their
way of dealing with them. Many of them had lots of fine riding-horses
in their paddocks. These would be yarded some fine night, the best taken
and ridden hard, perhaps returned next morning, perhaps in a day or two.
It was pretty well known who had used them, but nothing was said; the
best policy, some think, is to hold a candle to the devil, especially
when the devil's camped close handy to your paddock, and might any time
sack your house, burn down your woolshed and stacks, or even shoot at
your worshipful self if he didn't like the way you treated him and his
imps.
These careful respectable people didn't show themselves too forward
either in giving help or information to the police. Not by no means.
They never encouraged them to stay when they came about the place, and
weren't that over liberal in feeding their horses, or giving them a hand
in any way, that they'd come again in a hurry. If they were asked about
the bush-rangers, or when they'd been last seen, they were very careful,
and said as little as possible.
No one wonders at people like the Barnes's, or little farmers, or the
very small sort of settlers, people with one flock of sheep or a few
cows, doing this sort of thing; they have a lot to lose and nothing
to get if they gain ill-will. But regular country gentlemen, with big
properties, lots of money, and all the rest of it, they're there to
show a good example to the countryside, whether it paid for the time or
whether it didn't; and all us sort of chaps, on the cross or not, like
them all the better for it.
When I say all of us, I don't mean Moran. A sulky, black-hearted,
revengeful brute he always was--I don't think he'd any manly feeling
about him. He was a half-bred gipsy, they told us that knew where he was
reared, and Starlight said gipsy blood was a queer cross, for devilry
and hardness it couldn't be beat; he didn't wonder a bit at Moran's
being the scoundrel he was.
No doubt he 'had it in' for more than one of the people who helped the
police to chevy Wall and his lot about. From what I knew of him I was
sure he'd do some mischief one of these days, and make all the country
ten times as hot against us as they were now. He had no mercy about him.
He'd rather shoot a man any day than not; and he'd burn a house down
just for the pleasure of seeing how the owner looked when it was
lighted.
Starlight used to say he despised men that tried to save themselves
cowardly-like more than he could say, and thought them worse than the
bush-rangers themselves. Some of them were big people, too.
But other country gentlemen, like Mr. Falkland, were quite of a
different pattern. If they all acted like him I don't think we should
any of us have reigned as long as we did. They helped and encouraged the
police in every possible way. They sent them information whenever they
had received any worth while. They lent them horses freely when their
own were tired out and beaten. More than that, when bush-rangers were
supposed to be in the neighbourhood they went out with them themselves,
lying out and watching through the long cold nights, and taking their
chance of a shot as well as those that were paid for it.
Now there was a Mr. Whitman that had never let go a chance from the
start of running their trail with the police, and had more than once
given them all they knew to get away. He was a native of the country,
like themselves, a first-class horseman and tracker, a hardy, game sort
of a chap that thought nothing of being twenty-four hours in the saddle,
or sitting under a fence watching for the whole of a frosty night.
Well, he was pretty close to Moran once, who had been out by himself;
that close he ran him he made him drop his rifle and ride for his life.
Moran never forgave him for this, and one day when they had all been
drinking pretty heavy he managed to persuade Wall, Hulbert, Burke, and
Daly to come with him and stick up Whitman's house.
'I sent word to him I'd pay him out one of these fine days,' he drawled
out, 'and he'll find that Dan Moran can keep his word.'
He picked a time when he knew Whitman was away at another station. I
always thought Moran was not so game as he gave himself out to be. And
I think if he'd had Whitman's steady eyes looking at him, and seeing a
pistol in his hand, he wouldn't have shot as straight as he generally
did when he was practising at a gum tree.
Anyhow, they laid it out all right, as they thought, to take the place
unawares. They'd been drinking at a flash kind of inn no great way off,
and when they rode up to the house it seems they were all of 'em
three sheets in the wind, and fit for any kind of villainy that came
uppermost. As for Moran, he was a devil unchained. I know what he was.
The people in the house that day trembled and shook when they heard the
dogs bark and saw five strange horsemen ride through the back gate into
the yard.
They'd have trembled a deal more if they'd known what was coming.