DICK'S limbs were all stiff and sore when he awakened, but he was
wolfishly hungry, and that fact satisfied his mother that he had suffered
no particular physical injury. He was still much paler than usual and
suspiciously reserved, but he ate a good breakfast, and would have given
his mother even more gratifying evidence of the perfect state of his
health Had not Miss Chris interrupted his meal by a sudden and
disconcerting entrance. The young woman came into the room breathless,
eager-eyed, and white to the lips. She drew herself up by the door, and
made a poor pathetic effort to compose herself, to frame her plea in
conventional words; but she was too agitated to remember customary
greetings.
'Tell me! Tell me!' she said faintly.
Dick sat stock still, wondering what new thing had happened, asking
himself how much Chris knew of his secret; but sympathetic little Mrs.
Haddon started up in astonishment.
'Tell you what, my dear?' Then light came to her. 'About the accident?'
'Yes, oh, yes! Is it true? They say he is dying!'
'It isn't true. He is not very badly hurt. His mother went to the
hospital with him, an' has come back. It's concussion, the doctors say,
an' nothin' serious.'
Miss Chris was plucking nervously at the bosom of her dress with her left
hand, steadying herself against the table with her right; now that she
knew there was no occasion for her great alarm, woman-like she trembled
on the verge of tears. Mrs. Haddon had resumed her seat, and for a moment
the eyes of the two women met; then, much to the boy's astonishment, Miss
Chris covered her face with her hands and darted forward and knelt by his
mother's side, and there was a repetition of the incident in which he had
figured a few hours earlier. Mrs. Haddon clasped Christina to her tender
breast, and spoke little soothing speeches over the fair head, whilst
Chris wept a little, and laughed a little, and clung tightly to her
friend.
'Yes, yes, I know, my dear,' whispered Mrs. Haddon. 'I know, I know. But
don't you fret. It'll all come out right.'
The women seemed thoroughly to understand each other, but to Dick this
was quite inexplicable. He perceived, however, that Miss Chris was
troubled in some way, and all his romantic chivalrous feelings were
stirred, and his determination to spare her at all costs was strengthened
again. Looking at the pair, and remembering the consolation he had
derived from his mother's strong embrace, the boy wondered what peculiar
virtue lay in that kindly bosom that seemed to make it the natural refuge
of the afflicted; and, wondering, he stole out and left the two together.
When the women of Waddy had anything exceptional to talk about they
talked amazingly, and on this particular Monday there was so much of
interest to be discussed that even the most voluble could only do justice
to the subjects by neglecting domestic duties and devoting themselves to
back-gate arguments. Harry Hardy's accident was considered and debated
from many points of view. Harry was twice reported dead during the
morning--on the authority of Mrs. Ben Steven and Mrs. Sloan--but this was
contradicted by Mrs. Justin, who declared that the young man still
breathed, but was suffering from many and various injuries which she
alone was able to minutely describe. Then Mrs. Hardy arrived home from
Yarraman, and it became known that the injuries were not likely to prove
mortal; so the subject lost interest and was abandoned in favour of
Richard Haddon and his blood thirsty gang. 'The boy Haddon' had been
captured after a desperate encounter, and would be called upon to stand
his trial, along with the poor lads he had so grievously misled, at
Yarrarnan next day. It was conceded that he was about to meet his deserts
at last; but there was some slight difference of opinion as to the exact
nature of Dick's deserts. Some of the ladies thought ten years'
imprisonment with various floggings and other heavy penalties in the way
of solitary confinement, leg-irons, and an unvarying diet of dry bread
and water would be the severest punishment with which the youthful
malefactor could reasonably be afflicted. Mrs. Ben Steven stood out
resolutely for hanging, and, taking into account the thrilling report of
his crimes supplied by the extraordinary issue of the Yarraman Mercury,
many of the ladies were compelled to admit that this extreme view was
probably the correct one; besides, it possessed the advantage of
coinciding admirably with long-established popular opinion about Dick's
end. They generously admitted, however, that they were sorry for his
mother, poor lady.
The Mercury could not very well have made more of what it called 'The
Outbreak of a New Gang' in its Sunday extraordinary. A whole page was
filled with various accounts of the depredations of the gang, the
terrifying appearance of its members, and certain moral reflections
thrown in by the editor for the benefit of the Government and the police.
There was 'Mr. Bilison's account,' 'Mr. Hogan's account,' and 'the
account given by Master Mathieson.' Each of these persons had been stuck
up by the gang, and had escaped most miraculously after displaying great
daring in the face of a bloodthirsty fire. The Mercury exhausted all its
resources in the way of large black capitals and display type to do
justice to the biggest sensation that had come in its way for years, and
the appearance of the paper created the most profound amazement
throughout the town and district. Gable was described as a cunning
scoundrel whose affectations of almost imbecile simplicity might easily
have deceived intelligences less keen than those at the service of the
Mercury, and neither Messrs. Billson and Hogan nor Master Mathieson
hinted that their assailants were anything less than grown men of the
largest size and most ferocious type.
Alas! in Monday morning's Mercury the editor was reluctantly compelled to
repudiate the most enthralling portions of Sunday's story, but he still
took a very serious view of the affair, and vehemently contended that
recent facts did not in any way tend to relieve the Government of its
responsibilities in the matter of increased police-protection for
Yarraman and district. It had transpired that the perpetrators of the
series of outrages on the Cow Flat road were boys, undisciplined and
dangerous youths, fully armed and led by the man Gable, whose mental
infirmities were of such a nature as to render him unfit to be at large
in a civilised community. The Mercury was informed that all the young
ruffians who had taken part in the sticking-up incidents were in custody,
and would appear in the police court on the following morning.
Mrs. Haddon, who still believed Dick's strange reserve and lack of
spirits to be due to his fear of the law and the dread prospect of having
to appear in court, endeavoured indirectly (and very cleverly, as she
imagined) to ease his mind. She did not wish him to think he had done no
wrong, or that she did not regard his conduct as most reprehensible; but
his mute misery appealed to her motherly heart, and she heaped derision
on those 'fool men' who had been deluded by the silly pretence of a pack
of boys, and who would be the laughing-stock of the whole countryside
when the truth was made known in court and the magistrates abused them
for cowards and simpletons. This was comforting to Dick; but in truth he
thought little of the pending court case, and it gave him no concern even
when he found himself in the troopers' hands. His secret weighed heavily
upon him, and the sight of Mrs. Hardy, erect and brave and composed as
ever, but with traces of suffering in her face that the boy could not
fail to detect, brought home to him an aspect of the case that he had not
considered up to now. Her son Frank was a prisoner suffering for a crime
committed by Ephraim Shine: in protecting Shine for Christina's sake he
must sacrifice Mrs. Hardy, Frank, and Harry.
The problem tried Dick sorely, but he had plenty of time to think it over
and he determined to wait for Harry's story. He must be true to Chris in
any case, and he knew her love and admiration for her father were deep
and sincere. He could not understand it: he admitted to himself that
affection for such a man as the searcher was quite absurd and uncalled
for; but he knew full well that the blow would fall upon the girl with
crushing force, and his heart fought for her, and every romantic impulse
he cherished bade him be leal and bold in the cause of the queen of her
sex. In the end he resolved that if Harry had not recognised his
assailants he would warn Shine in some way, and when the searcher had
made good his escape he would tell the whole truth. This, according to
his boyish logic, was fair treatment to all parties, so the resolution
brought him some peace of mind.
The appearance of the Waddy bushrangers in the police court excited
extraordinary interest at Yarraman, and Tuesday morning witnessed
something very like an exodus from Waddy. Every man and woman who could
possibly get away made the journey to Yarraman, all as partisans of the
prisoners. In Waddy Dick and his fellow imps could not be too severely
condemned; but Waddy refused to recognise the right of outsiders to abuse
them, and however vicious they may have been, it was felt to be the duty
of the township to stand by its own as against the 'townies' and the
witnesses from Cow Flat.
The court was packed, and most of the people of Waddy had to be content
to stand with the crowd that filled the street. An attempt had been made
at the last moment to alter the charge against the boys to insulting
behaviour, or something equally trivial, and all in court looked for much
amusement. In fact, the tremendous bushranging sensation had degenerated
into something very like a farce.
The witnesses for the prosecution were the three young men from McIvor's
run, who made the gallant attack upon the gang and captured Gable;
Billson, the farmer who had been bailed up in his cart; Hogan, the
horseman; the boy Mathieson, the tollman, and the woman, Cox by name.
The young men were now sober and subdued, and the evidence they gave
differed materially from the story told to the police on Saturday night
when they cantered into Yarramnan with their prisoner, drunk and
vainglorious. They admitted now that the gang did not make a very
strenuous resistance to their gallant charge, but insisted that the boys
were armed with revolvers, and that Gable struggled like a demon; and the
old man, standing amongst his fellow prisoners, evidently immensely
delighted with the part he was playing, smiled brightly upon the court
and ejaculated 'Oh, I say! Oh, crickey! 'a propos of nothing in
particular.
Bilison testified to having been bailed up on the Cow Flat road by a gang
of bushrangers, who demanded his money or his life and fired upon him. He
described his hairbreadth escape with primitive eloquence, and was
certain the gang meant to murder him. He was too agitated at the time to
notice whether the bushrangers were men or boys. It was he who overtook
the three young men, but they could not be induced to turn back till the
boy Mathieson came up with them and declared the highwaymen to be a mob
of boys.
Hogan was equally positive about the firearms, and thought he heard the
bullets whistling past his ears, but could not swear to it. At this stage
the defendants' lawyer, who had been harrowing the witnesses with many
questions and heaping ridicule upon their devoted heads, called for the
prisoners' arms to be produced, and the sight of the toy pistols with
their mutton-boned barrels provoked yells of laughter in the court, which
were presently echoed in the streets.
But it was not till brawny Mrs. Cox took her stand in the witness-box
that the absurdity of the Meroury's story and the charge was exposed
fully to a delighted audience. Mrs. Cox marched into the box in an
aggressive way, saluted the book with an emphatic and explosive kiss, and
then stood erect, square-shouldered and defiant, giving the court and all
concerned to understand by her attitude that it must not be imagined any
advantage could be taken of her. She told her story in a bluff dogmatic
way. She was bailed up by the miscreants and scared out of her seven
senses. They demanded her money or her life, and she believed that it was
their intention to leave her 'welterin' in her gore'; and having said as
much she squared round upon the lawyer, arms akimbo and head thrown back,
inviting him to come on to his inevitable destruction.
'Come, come, madam,' said the barrister, 'you must not tell us you
imagined for a moment you were ever in any serious danger from these
terrible fellows.'
'Mustn't! mustn't!' cried Mrs. Cox. 'An', indeed, why not, sir? Who're
you to tell me I musn't?'
Mrs. Cox stopped deliberately and carefully rolled up both sleeves of her
dress. Then, unhampered and in customary trim, she smote the cedar in
front of her and cried:
'Mustn't, indeed!
'No offence, ma'am,' said the small lawyer in a conciliatory tone; 'no
offence in the world. Please explain what you did when attacked by the
prisoners.'
'What' d I do? First I said a prayer for me soul.'
'And then?'
'And then I grabbed one o' the young imps, an'
I--,
Here Mrs. Cox's actions implied that she had a struggling bushranger in
her grip. She drew him over her knee, and then, for the education and
edification of the court, went through the task of enthusiastically
spanking a purely imaginary small boy.
The pantomime was most convincing, and provoked roars of laughter that
completely drowned the shrill pipe of the policeman fiercely demanding
order; when the noise had subsided Gable, flushed with excitement and
with dancing eyes and jigging limbs, cried out 'Oh, crickey!' with such
gusto that the laughter broke loose again in defiance of all restraint,
and was maintained until the chairman of the bench, himself almost
apoplectic from his efforts to swallow his mirth, arose and talked of
clearing the court; then the crowd, fearful of missing the fun to come,
quietened in a few seconds and the case was resumed.
'You thrashed the young rip, Mrs. Cox,' said the lawyer. 'You did well. A
pity you did not serve them all alike and save us the folly of this most
ridiculous case.'
'I did grab another,' said the witness, 'an' I--' Mrs. Cox repeated her
eloquent pantomime.
'Oh, crickey!' cried Gable. 'Oh, I say, here's a lark!'
'Silence in court,' squealed the asthmatical policeman.
'Excellent,' said the lawyer. 'And so, madam, you drove off this
desperate and bloodthirsty gang by simply slapping them all round?'
'Yes, after I'd been assaulted with a goat,' cried the witness, flushing
with a recollection of her wrongs and shaking a formidable fist at the
prisoners. 'After I'd been assaulted with a goat sooled on by one o' the
bla'guards.'
The lawyer spoke a few soothing words:
'You deserve the thanks of the community, Mrs. Cox, for the businesslike
way in which you suppressed this diabolical gang. Your method is in
pleasing contrast with the ridiculous effeminacy of the previous
witnesses. I have no doubt you would treat an adult bushranger in exactly
the same way.'
'Or a lawyer either,' said Mrs. Cox, detecting sarcasm.
The case was practically decided when Mrs. Cox stepped down. The bench
desired to have some evidence as to Gable's character, and leading
residents of Waddy described his infirmity, and spoke of him as
unentirely harmless and innocent old man. The case was dismissed; but the
chairman, in acquitting the prisoners, took occasion to remind their
parents that if the excellent example set by Mrs. Cox were followed by
them all, it would probably tend to the moral advantage of the boys and
the benefit of society at large.
The return to Waddy was something in the nature of a triumphal march in
which the late prisoners figured as heroes, but they lost importance
immediately after reaching the township. A new topic of great interest
had sprung up during the absence of the crowd; news had arrived of Harry
Hardy's recovery, and it was known that his injuries were not the result
of a fall of reef, but were inflicted by gold-stealers who had got into
the mine in some mysterious way and had escaped again just as
mysteriously. Already Waddy had decided upon the identity of the culprits
who, it was confidently asserted, would be found amongst the small
community of Chinamen whose huts were situated on the bank of the creek
at a distance of about two miles from the township, and who made a
precarious living by fossicking and growing vegetables. Waddy always
settled matters of this kind out of hand, and the presence of those
Chinamen saved it much mental trouble in accounting for thefts small or
great.
Late that night Joe Rogers and the searcher sat together in a hidden
place in the corner paddock discussing the turn events had taken. The
last three days had told upon Shine, who was pallid, hollow-cheeked, and
nervous; he fumbled always with his bent bony fingers bunched behind him,
and when in the presence of others twisted and turned his curious feet
continuously with a dull anxiety that irritated the men beyond bearing.
Now, crouched amongst the scrub by the side of his mate, he whined about
their danger.
'We should 'a' cleared. We oughter clear now. We'll be nabbed if we
stay.'
'We'll be nabbed if we bolt,' replied Rogers. 'The man as cleared now
would be spotted as the guilty party, an' half the p'lice in the country
'd be up an' after him. No, here we are, an' here we stick fer better or
worse.'
'But if they've got the gold, why don't they do somethin'? There's no
word of it. Rogers, if you're foolin' me over this--'
'Will you stop twiddlin' those cursed feet of yours an' listen to me?
They haven't got the gold, but I think I've guessed who has. That young
whelp Haddon.'
'Dickie Haddon? How, how? Where's it now?'
'How in thunder should I know? But I know the troopers didn't get it.
They would have made some noise about it afore this. See here, they were
huntin' that kid when they went into the quarry. He must 'a' hid
somewhere about when he heard them comin'; p'raps in that very tree. Then
he dragged the gold away before we got back, an' hid it. That's my idea.'
'An' d'ye think he saw us?'
'I don't. He'd 'a' split at once.'
'Well, well, an' what'll you do?'
'Collar young Haddon, an' frighten the truth out o' him or break every
bone in his cursed skin.'
'But he'd know then, you fool.'
'Will he? I'll take all sorts o' care he doesn't know me, you can take
your colonial oath on that.'
'An' if you get the gold back, no dirty tricks. It's halves, you
know--fair halves!'
'Yes, an' haven't you always got your share all fair an' square? An'
what' ye you ever done fer it but whimper an' cant an' snuffle, like the
cur you are?'
'I was goin' to give it up after this,' whined Shine, disregarding Joe's
outburst, 'an' get married again, an' live God-fearin' an' respectable.'
Rogers glared at him in the darkness, and laughed in an ugly way.
'Marry! 'he sneered. 'Man, the little widow wouldn't have you. She's
waitin' fer Frank Hardy; an', as fer yer God-fearin' life, you're such an
all-fired hippercrit, Shine, that I believe you fool yourself that you're
a holy man in spite o' everythin,' 'pon me soul I do!
'Ah, Joseph Rogers, the devil may triumph fer a while, but I'm naturally
a child o' grace, an' if you'd on'y turn--'
Rogers uttered an oath, and drawing back struck the searcher in the face
with his open hand.
'Enough o' that!' he cried. 'None o' your sick'nin' Sunday-school humbug
fer me, Mr. Superintendent. We've talked o' that before.'
Shine arose, and moved back a few paces.
'I'd better be goin',' he said. ''Taint fer us to quarrel, Joseph. Leave
the usual sign when we're to meet again.'
Bent over his unconscionable feet, he stole away amongst the trees, and a
few minutes later Rogers moved oft slowly in another direction, towards
the lights of the Drovers' Arms. His thoughts as he strolled were not
very favourable to his fellow criminal.
'Let me once get my hands on that gold,' he muttered, 'an' I'll bolt for
'Frisco.