XXXV

A month’s loafing in the Hollow. Nothing doing and nothing to think of except what was miserable enough, God knows. Then things began to shape themselves, in a manner of speaking. We didn’t talk much together; but each man could see plain enough what the others was thinking of. Dad growled out a word now and then, and Warrigal would look at us from time to time with a flash in his hawk’s eyes that we’d seen once or twice before and knew the meaning of. As for Jim, we were bound to do something or other, if it was only to keep him from going melancholy mad. I never seen any man changed more from what he used to be than Jim did. He that was the most careless, happy-go-lucky chap that ever stepped, always in a good temper and full of his larks. At the end of the hottest day in summer on the plains, with no water handy, or the middle of the coldest winter night in an ironbark forest, and we sitting on our horses waiting for daylight, with the rain pouring down our backs, not game to light a fire, and our hands that cold we could hardly hold the reins, it was all one to Jim. Always jolly, always ready to make little of it all. Always ready to laugh or chaff or go on with monkey tricks like a boy. Now it was all the other way with him. He’d sit grizzling and smoking by himself all day long. No getting a word out of him. The only time he seemed to brighten up was once when he got a letter from Jeanie. He took it away into the bush and stayed hours and hours.

From never thinking about anything or caring what came uppermost, he seemed to have changed all on the other tack and do nothing but think. I’d seen a chap in Berrima something like him for a month or two; one day he manned the barber’s razor and cut his throat. I began to be afraid Jim would go off his head and blow his brains out with his own revolver. Starlight himself got to be cranky and restless-like too. One night he broke out as we were standing smoking under a tree, a mile or so from the cave⁠—

“By all the devils, Dick, I can’t stand this sort of thing much longer. We shall go mad or drink ourselves to death”⁠—(we’d all been pretty well “on” the night before)⁠—“if we stick here till we’re trapped or smoked out like a ’guana out of a tree spout. We must make a rise somehow, and try for blue water again. I’ve been fighting against the notion the whole time we’ve been here, but the devil and your old dad (who’s a near relative, I believe) have been too strong for us. Of course, you know what it’s bound to be?”

“I suppose so. I know when dad was away last week he saw that beggar and some of his mates. They partly made it up awhile back, but didn’t fancy doing it altogether by themselves. They’ve been waiting on the chance of our standing in and your taking command.”

“Of course, the old story,” he says, throwing his cigar away, and giving a half laugh⁠—such a laugh it was, too. “Captain Starlight again, I suppose. The paltry vanity of leadership, and of being in the front of my fellow-men, has been the ruin of me ever since I could recollect. If my people had let me go into the army, as I begged and prayed of them to do, it might have been all the other way. I recollect that day and hour when my old governor refused my boyish petition, laughed at me⁠—sneered at me. I took the wrong road then. I swear to you, Dick, I never had thought of evil till that cursed day which made me reckless and indifferent to everything. And this is the end⁠—a wasted life, a felon’s doom! Quite melodramatic, isn’t it, Richard? Well, we’ll play out the last act with spirit. ‘Enter first robber,’ and so on. Good night.”

He walked away. I never heard him say so much about himself before. It set me thinking of what luck and chance there seemed to be in this world. How men were not let do what they knew was best for ’em⁠—often and often⁠—but something seemed to drive ’em farther and farther along the wrong road, like a lot of stray wild cattle that wants to make back to their own run, and a dog here, a fence the other way. A man on foot or a flock of sheep always keeps frightening ’em farther and farther from the old beat till they get back into a bit of back country or mallee scrub and stop there for good. Cattle and horses and men and women are awful like one another in their ways, and the more you watch ’em the more it strikes you.

Another day or two idling and card-playing, another headache after too much grog at night, brought us to a regular go in about business, and then we fixed it for good.

We were to stick up the next monthly gold escort. That was all. We knew it would be a heavy one and trusted to our luck to get clear off with the gold, and then take a ship for Honolulu or San Francisco. A desperate chance; but we were desperate men. We had tried to work hard and honest. We had done so for best part of a year. No one could say we had taken the value of a halfpenny from any man. And yet we were not let stay right when we asked for nothing but to be let alone and live out the rest of our lives like men.

They wouldn’t have us that way, and now they must take us across the grain, and see what they would gain by that. So it happened we went out one day with Warrigal to show us the way, and after riding for hours and hours, we came to a thick scrub. We rode through it till we came to an old cattle track. We followed that till we came to a tumbledown slab hut with a stockyard beside it. The yard had been mended, and the rails were up. Seven or eight horses were inside, all in good condition. As many men were sitting or standing about smoking outside the old hut.

When we rode up they all came forward and we had it out. We knew who was coming, and were ready for ’em. There was Moran, of course, quiet and savage-looking, just as like a black snake as ever twisting about with his deadly glittering eyes, wanting to bite someone. There was Daly and Burke, Wall and Hulbert, and two or three more⁠—I won’t say who they were now⁠—and if you please who should come out of the hut last but Master Billy the Boy, as impudent as you like, with a pipe in his mouth, and a revolver in his belt, trying to copy Moran and Daly. I felt sorry when I see him, and thought what he’d gradually come to bit by bit, and where he’d most likely end, all along of the first money he had from father for telegraphing. But after all I’ve a notion that men and women grow up as they are intended to from the beginning. All the same as a tree from seed. You may twist it this road or that, make it a bit bigger or smaller according to the soil or the way it’s pruned and cut down when it’s young, but you won’t alter the nature of that tree or the fruit that it bears. You won’t turn a five-corner into a quince, or a geebung into an orange, twist and twine, and dig and water as you like. So whichever way Billy the Boy had been broken and named he’d have bolted and run off the course. Take a pet dingo now. He might look very tame, and follow them that feed him, and stand the chain; but as soon as anything passed close that he could kill, he’d have his teeth into it and be lapping its blood before you could say knife, and the older he got the worse he’d be.

“Well, Dick,” says this young limb of Satan, “so you’ve took to the Queen’s highway agin, as the chap says in the play. I thought you and Jim was a-going to jine the Methodies or the Sons of Temperance at Turon, you both got to look so thunderin’ square on it. Poor old Jim looks dreadful down in the mouth, don’t he, though?”

“It would be all the better for you if you’d joined some other body, you young scamp,” I said. “Who told you to come here? I’ve half a mind to belt you home again to your mother;” and I walked towards him.

“No, you won’t, Dick Marston, don’t you make any mistake,” says the young bull-pup, looking nasty. “I’m as good a man as you, with this little tool.” Here he pulled out his revolver. “I’ve as much right to turn out as you have. What odds is it to you what I do?”

I looked rather foolish at this, and Moran and Burke began to laugh.

“You’d better set up a night-school, Dick,” says Burke, “and get Billy and some of the other flash kiddies to come. They might turn over a new leaf in time.”

“If you’ll stand up, or Moran there, that’s grinning behind you, I’ll make some of ye laugh on the wrong side,” I said.

“Come on,” drawls Moran, taking off his coat, and walking up; “I’d like to have a smack at you before you go into the Church.”

We should have been at it hammer and tongs⁠—we both hated one another like poison⁠—only the others interfered, and Billy said we ought to be ashamed of ourselves for quarrelling like schoolboys. We were nice sort of chaps to stick up a gold escort. That made a laugh, and we knocked off.

Well, it looked as if no one wanted to speak. Then Hulbert, a very quiet chap, says, “I believe Ben Marston’s the oldest man here; let’s hear what he’s got to say.”

Father gets up at once, and looks steady at the rest of ’em, takes his pipe out of his mouth, and shakes the baccy out. Then he says⁠—

“All on ye knows without my telling what we’ve come here about, and what there’s hangin’ to it. It’s good enough if it’s done to rights; but make no mistake, boys, it’s a battle as must be fought game, and right back to the ropes, or not at all. If there’s a bird here that won’t stand the steel he’d better be put in a bag and took home again.”

“Never mind about the steel, daddy,” says one of the new men. “We’re all good for a flutter when the wager’s good. What’ll it be worth a man, and where are we going to divide? We know your mob’s got some crib up in the mountains that no one knows about. We don’t want the swag took there and planted. It mightn’t be found easy.”

“Did ever a one of ye heer tell o’ me actin’ crooked?” says father. “Look here, Bill, I’m not as young as I was, but you stand up to me for three rounds and I’ll take some of the cheek out of yer.”

Bill laughed.

“No fear, daddy, I’d sooner face Dick or Jim. But I only want what’s fair between man and man. It’s a big touch, you know, and we can’t take it to the bank to divide, like diggers, or summons yer either.”

“What’s the good of growlin’ and snappin’?” says Burke. “We’re all goin’ in regular, I suppose, share and share alike?” The men nodded. “Well, there’s only one way to make things shipshape, and that’s to have a captain. We’ll pick one of ourselves, and whatever he says we’ll bind ourselves to do⁠—life or death. Is that it, boys?”

“Yes, yes, that’s the only way,” came from all hands.

“Now, the next thing to work is who we’re to make captain of. There’s one here as we can all depend on, who knows more about road-work than all the rest of us put together. You know who I mean; but I don’t want ye to choose him or any man because I tell you. I propose Starlight for captain if he’ll take it, and them that don’t believe me let ’em find a better man if they can.”

“I vote for Dan Moran,” says another man, a youngish farmer-looking chap. “He’s a bushman, like ourselves, and not a half-bred swell, that’s just as likely to clear out when we want him most as do anything else.”

“You go back to the Springs and feed them pigs, Johnny,” says father, walking towards the young chap. “That’s about what you’re bred for; nobody’ll take you for a swell, quarter-bred, or anything else. Howsoever, let’s draw lots for it. Every man put his fancy down on a bit of paper, and put ’em into my old hat here.”

This was done after a bit, and the end of it was ten votes for Starlight and two or three for Moran, who looked savage and sulkier than ever.

When this was over Starlight walked over from where he was standing, near me and Jim, and faced the crowd. He drew himself up a bit, and looked round as haughty as he used to do when he walked up the big room at the Prospectors’ Arms in Turon⁠—as if all the rest of us was dirt under his feet.

“Well, my lads,” he said, “you’ve done me the great honour to elect me to be your captain. I’m willing to act, or I shouldn’t be here. If you’re fools enough to risk your lives and liberties for a thousand ounces of gold a man, I’m fool enough to show you the way.”

“Hurrah!” said half-a-dozen of them, flinging up their hats. “We’re on, Captain. Starlight forever! You ride ahead and we’ll back up.”

“That will do,” he says, holding up his hand as if to stop a lot of dogs barking; “but listen to me.” Here he spoke a few words in that other voice of his that always sounded to me and Jim as if it was a different man talking, or the devil in his likeness. “Now mind this before we go: you don’t quite know me; you will by and by, perhaps. When I take command of this gang, for this bit of work or any other, my word’s law⁠—do you hear? And if any man disputes it or disobeys my orders, by ⸻, I’ll shoot him like a dog.”

As he stood there looking down on the lot of ’em, as if he was their king, with his eyes burning up at last with that slow fire that lay at the bottom of ’em, and only showed out sometimes, I couldn’t help thinking of a pirate crew that I’d read of when I was a boy, and the way the pirate captain ruled ’em.

There was no cheering after this, most of ’em sat down on their heels⁠—native fashion⁠—and began to take out their pipes as if the play was over, and yarn away among themselves. I heard a bit of a low laugh behind me, and there was Warrigal with all his white teeth showing.

“My word,” he said, “didn’t he frighten ’em?” There was two more of ’em wanted Moran for captain, but they wasn’t game to speak. I never see the man that could talk to him. Jim and I often wondered what it was that made Warrigal so out-and-out bound up with Starlight. When he wasn’t talking you’d see his eyes follow him about like a collie dog does his master. I believe there was something about Starlight’s saving his life when he was a little chap, but that couldn’t have been all of it. There’s a many people in this world as you might save their lives half-a-dozen times over and they wouldn’t so much as say thank you, let alone give up their own for you, as I believe this chap would, or let himself be cut up in little bits for him any day. There’s some things as can’t be made out, and this was one of ’em. I’ve seen dogs as would do that kind of thing, and a woman here and there; but I’m dashed if Warrigal wasn’t the only man I ever met as seemed to live his life in another’s. I believe he’d almost bleed to death if anyone had stuck a knife into Starlight deep enough to hurt him.

After this we began to talk more free and easy and pleasant like. We had to fix the place to do the sticking-up at, the number of men to meet each other at a particular hour, the time to make the rush, the men that were to ride, them that were to go on foot, them that were to lead the packhorses.

Then to settle where the gold was to be brought to and where it was to be divided, in case the gold escort robbery⁠—for that, of course, was the game we were after⁠—came off right.

The gold was to be divided into so many shares. If any man was shot dead, his share was to go to his friends. The next week was the end of the month. There had been some heavy washings-up, and we heard that the next escort was more likely to be twelve or fifteen thousand ounces than ten. There were some cakes of retorted gold, too; one of them nearly two thousand ounces. The Golden Gate claim had washed up just before. We knew it always made a deal of difference to the escort it was sent down with.

One thing went a lot against the grain with us⁠—that is, with Jim, and me, and Starlight. It was that some of the gold we were going to have, if we could, belonged to diggers⁠—working men like ourselves, and that we’d always been good friends and mates with all the time we’d been at Turon. They’d worked hard for it as we knew, and never done us any harm. Quite the other way.

Most of the small lots of gold had been bought by the banks. We didn’t mind them, thinking, like our class generally, that banks had lots of money, and could afford to lose it. But the Golden Gate and two or three other claims always sent down their own gold to Sydney in separate parcels. It would be hard upon them to lose it, but we supposed the Government would make it up to them, if it was taken while under their charge. This turned out to be all wrong; the Government did not hold themselves responsible. They charged so much an ounce for forwarding it, and took as good care as they could, but they did not run the risk of loss, as the diggers found afterwards to their cost.

Before we left it was all settled that the gold should be brought to a place in the mountains, and divided there, if we couldn’t do it on the spot. The other men didn’t know much about weights and measures, but they said they’d have a man there who did know, and we agreed. When we heard his name, it stunned us above a bit, but Dad only grinned. He knew about him before, and that he was ready enough to stand in with any robbery so long as he got paid, and his name was kept out of it. We were not to pay him anything, but they might if they liked, and he was to sell their share for them. Then there was the bail-up place to fix. There was nothing half so good, they all said, as Eugowra Rocks⁠—a narrow track, with a longish hill and great boulders of granite on each side of the road, where twenty men could lie in plant and no one have a chance of spotting them till it was too late. The escort drag was always obliged to go slow there. By falling a tree or two across the road they’d have to go slower. They didn’t reach the place till close up dark, and there would be quite light enough afterwards to do what we wanted.

It was settled where we were all to meet in the afternoon, seven or eight miles from Eugowra. Our lot, of course, would be together, and the rest would muster up by twos and threes, so as not to set people thinking we was bound for a regular put-up thing. They’d find out soon enough what we were after.

All the time we were there, Jim stood up against a tree, and hardly said a word to anyone. He just passed the time of day to those as gave it to him, and that’s all. Some of ’em tried to talk to him a bit, but it was no use, and they left off. He wasn’t a man most people liked to interfere with; besides, they’d heard he’d got married, and left his wife behind him when he had to cut from the Turon, and they thought it was natural enough he should feel bad about it. One or two of them would have liked to have left their wives there, and never heard tell of ’em again. It was all through Joe Wall’s wife that he turned out, and gave up a good little run and stock enough to keep him comfortable all his life; but that says nothing. They all heard Jim’s wife was one of the right sort, and good-looking into the bargain; so they knew how it was, and pitied him. He’d fight all the better for it, anyhow.

The sun was near down when we started for home, and it was late enough when we got there⁠—dark as pitch, too, for a storm came on, and you couldn’t see your horse’s head in front of you. I often wonder how we got through this and lots of other nights, riding without knocking our brains out against trees, or riding over drops and places deep enough to smash us and our horses to bits.

The only thing was that Warrigal knew every foot of the country night or day, and he could see in the dark, I really believe, like a cat. He went first and we all followed, one after the other. The horses did the most of it themselves, and wonderful animals they are. They’d put their heads down, and seem to smell out the right track to take. Sometimes we’d get a crack from an overhanging bough, but we weren’t going fast. There was no place to camp, and our lives were not that valuable, Starlight said, that it mattered much one way or the other.

Next morning we had nothing to do of course, and plenty of time to think it all over. We were none of us sorry that the thing was settled, and the battle bound to come off. We were like soldiers in camp, only they’re safe as long as they stay in them, except fever gets among em, and the enemy presses ’em day and night. I daresay they think they might as well be killed one way as the other. Better die fighting, with the chance of a step or a good lump of prize money. Anyhow, there’s nothing a man, that is a man, hates as much as he does doing nothing; and the more he’s got on his mind that hurts and stings him every time he turns it over, the more wild he is for something that’ll clear it all off and give him something fresh to think about.