XXXVII
“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 lookout.
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 turnout—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 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.”
I never could make out for ever so long, where dad went to get the newspapers he showed us and his letters besides. Letters he got—plenty of ’em—though he couldn’t read nor write. Of course someone read ’em for him. Who it could be to be trusted that much I never could think. The story about the dog in Court seemed to put him into an extra good humour.
“You can come, Dick,” he says, “if you ain’t afeard of being took.” Then he looked over at Starlight. I got my horse sharp, and in 10 minutes we were off.
Twenty miles and more to the east of us was an outstation of Mr. Falkland’s. A rocky, thick place, with a few open ridges, well grassed and just up to keeping one strong flock of sheep all the year round.
When we got near the place the road was rough enough, nothing but wild horse and cattle tracks to be seen near it. Dad gets off, and we hobbled out our horses where there was a bit of grass at the foot of a big rock. Then we walks over to a small creek with springs in it, and follows it down to a hut and sheepyard. My word! it was a lonesome spot to live sure enough.
We went into the hut; so neat and clean it was. A “hatter” of course the shepherd would be; bed made up; kindling wood for next day’s fire in the corner. A shelf with a few books, a sheepskin mat or two on the floor, and a pair of old boots cut down for slippers. A bit of a table made of two boards, with the legs stuck in the ground; a slab form outside the door, and two three-legged stools inside.
Father takes the frying-pan; it had some fat in it. He finds a leg and loin of mutton hung up in a bag, with some damper. I made up the fire, and we soon fried some chops. There was plenty of tea in the kettle, it only wanted warming up. Father took a pound of good tobacco out of his coat pocket and laid it on the shelf. We got the sugar and salt in a bit of a cupboard where all sorts of odds and ends were kept. We had a real good feed—mind you, we’d been four hours coming that five and twenty mile, and hard going to do that. After that away we went, and tracked about till we saw which way the sheep went out in the morning. We cut the fresh tracks at last, and followed on till we could see the line a shepherd would most likely take along a gully. After another hour we came upon the flock camped, and all comfortable—a fine looking lot of sheep too—on a little bit of a flat by the water. It was the middle of the day and warmish by this time.
The shepherd was sitting on a log with his dog beside him, and taking it easy, as all shepherds do, until it was time to start and feed quietly home.
“Well, Davy,” says father, “Davy Jones, had any dingoes about, old lad?” That wasn’t his name, Dad told me afterwards. His real name was David Carstairs. He was a deal older man than father, and quite a different sort. No mistake about that. I often wondered what made them hang together so. A tall, broad-shouldered old fellow when he stood up, and had once been very upright you could see, like a soldier, which he had been. Now he was stooped, and beginning to get stiff in his joints. He must have been well over 70 years old. But he was that active still—more than you’d think—that with the help of a couple of good dogs he could manage his flock pretty well, old as he was. Mr. Falkland wasn’t the master to send away an old servant as long as he could crawl. Davey had been with him getting on for 20 years, and a good shepherd all the time. “Well, Poacher Ben,” he called out, quite hearty, when we walked up, “and ye’re no bangit. The Lord’s aye gracious. What new villainy are ye meditatin’ or carryin’ oot?”
“It makes no odds to you, Davy,” says father. “Anything come for me?”
“Maybe there is—maybe there isna,” says the old man, coolly. There must have been something about him a deal different from most men, if father stood that. There were very few people liked to play with him, I tell you.
“Sae naething less will do ye than sticking up her Majesty’s gold escort, as they call’t, shooting and slaying a sergeant of police, and firing in cauld bluid upon men that’s doin’ their duty. Ben Marston, ye’re a born deevil, weel I ken. But I didna think ye had been sae bauld a son of Belial as yon comes to.”
“You can’t swear I was in it, nor no other man,” growls father. “What’s the good of putting everything on my back that happens in this blessed country?”
“Nae doot ye’re sair belied,” says the old chap, quietly chuckling to himself. “And the laddie Starlight and the twa bairnies—Richard, here, and Jeems—he was a bonnie lad, yon Jeems, I mind—were they no in it? Maybe ye were passin’ by accidentally, and joost lookit in to see hoo things were ganging through. Maybe the auld doggie was no there? Ben Marston, ye’ll no throw dust in my auld een.”
“Who wants to throw dust in your eyes?” roars father. “Do you want me to send a letter to the p’leece saying where I’m to be found? When they catch me they’ll have me, and not before. Give me my papers, and leave the devil asleep if you care for your life.”
“Hooly, hooly!” says the old fellow, “I’m no to be freckened. Ye ken that. Ye’ll have them a’ in guid time. There was some only cam’ yestreen. If I hadna takken thocht to ha’ gone ootbye and passed the rock, there wad they ha’ lain till the morn’s morn, and ye’d no hae gettit them for a month—may be never ava.”
“Never’s a long word, Davy,” says father, lighting his pipe and sitting down quiet again like.
“And what for noo?” says the old Scotch chap (what a queer lingo it is, my word!). “Will ye no be hangit or shot, or ta’en and sent back to the wee wee cells we baith ken sae weel, and the iron brands, and the cauld and the heat, and the triangles, maybe, though I doot they canna flog noo.”
“No fear, Davy,” says father. “See this here little pistol,” and here he pulls out his revolver. “We usen’t to have ’em in those days, did we? Before I’d suffer myself to be took and stand my trial again, and have the whole thing twice over, I’d put this to my head and finish it once for all. Strike me blind if I wouldn’t, and that quick.”
“Deed and I joost think ye wad, Poacher Ben; ye’re an awfu’ dour crater. It was a word and a blow wi’ ye in them days, in the auld days. I’m feared to think o’ them e’en noo. Weel, here’s your letters; shall I open them and speer what is inside?”
“Yes, yes,” says father, puffing away; “read ’em true, as ye always have. I can trust you, Davy.”
“Ye may say that,” says the old chap, quite solemn like. “Weel, here’s ane from John Barker” (“Cross-eyed Jack,” says father). “Says there’s a lot of unbranded calves of Mr. Lumsden’s running near the gap, ten miles from Broken Creek. If you cop any, send him two pound.”
“He be hanged!” growls father; “he’d better run ’em himself. He’s a cowardly hound or he’d do it. Chuck it in the fire.”
“William Crickmere” (“Flash Bill,” says father). “Two lines. ‘Police working near old cattle-track, Nulla; camped Rocky Creek.’ ”
“Well done, old Bill,” he says. “There’s five pounds; send him that.”
“James Doherty: ‘If you can send thirty good colts and twenty mates and fillies to the old place to work over the boundary, the money is there.’ ”
“Can’t do it, now. Tell him he’d better sent word to Tandragco.”
“ ‘Musterin’ for fat cattle at Bandra and Doobajook next Monday week.’ No name to this ane.”
“I know who sent me that; it’s all right,” says father. “What’s this?”
“That’s from the puir sair-hearted woman that ye swore to luve and cherish a’ yer days, Ben Marston—in the han’ of write of that fine weel-faured lassie that has the ill fortune to ca’ ye father. Are ye no ’shamed to walk the earth, that have done waur to yer ain flesh and bluid tha’ the beasts o’ the field? Answer me that, ye bauld aul hardened sinner.”
“Why didn’t ye take to the parson racket when yer time was out?” sneers father. “Blest if ye can’t patter better than half on ’em. You’re the one man that I let talk to me that way, anyhow. Maybe ye’ll convert me some day.”
“On the day that ye saved this moeeserable life, and that of anither that was a hunner times dearer to me—Ben Marston—I made a vow to Almighty God to do ye whit sairvice I could to my deein’ day. Have I no kept my oath?”
“Davy Jones, I ain’t going for to deny it,” says father. “You’ve done more for me than any man living ever did or will. You don’t cotton to my ways and never did. It stuns me, as you could have stuck to me through it all, unless it was about the kid.”
“Poacher, robber, murderer, I had amaist said that ye are!” said the old man. “Why is it that I, David Carstairs, that never stole the value of a bawbee in this long, wasted life; that was exiled and sent awa’ to this wearifu’ land for a sma’ regimental offence—can ca’ ye freend and brither, and do your bidding, evil as your ways are? Why is it but that when I saw the blue eyes and the gowden locks o’ my wee darling lassie—the child o’ her that followed me from the auld country and died o’ grief and shame in this new ane—go down boneath the pitiless wave my eyes darkened and my soul seemed to have quitted its habitation. Did they no’ tell me that ye leapit in frae the forecastle of the prison ship, and the gale rising and the dark waves mounting—and when the boat was lowered and they brocht ye in mair deed than alive, did I no gae doon on my knees and vow a vow to the Lord of Life, to the Great Ruler o’ the Universe? And I hae keepit the oath, as I shall answer to the Lord at the last day. I hae keepit my vow.”
“And you’re about the only chap, except Falkland, as does stick to his word in this country—to coves like me, anyhow,” says father. “But stash all that woman’s talk. D’ye see that there tree?” he says, fierce like, and hitting an old yellow box-tree a crash that would have barked most men’s knuckles. “Yer might just as well talk to that blessed tree, and ye’d get as much good out of it. What’s the old woman’s pitch? I don’t say it ain’t rough on her.”
Old Davy took a long look, half pity, half wonder, at Dad, and then he groans and opens the letter. It was thus—Aileen had wrote it, of course:
“My dear husband—We saw about everything in the papers; our neighbours came over, and were very kind; but it was no use. Nothing will be any use how. I think you might have let the boys go before you went into such a thing. Their blood will be on your head. I told you that long ago, and many a time and often. Send the youngest away, if it is possible at all; he might be saved. I have no hope for you others. May God pardon your sins and give us all time for repentance before death ends all. I have been very ill, but feel stronger now. The police seem always about the place. Your sorrowful wife.”
“I’m dashed,” says father, swearing a great oath, “if I don’t make it hot for some of them traps if I catch ’em hanging about the old place. If they can’t catch me, why should they go botherin’ the old woman and the gal? Haven’t they had enough to stand without that being put on ’em—as is innocent and always was. By ⸻ they don’t know me yet; but they will some day, if they don’t look out.”
I never saw Dad so put out. His eyes glared, his lips trembled; he looked like no man at all; like something just come to the earth for a bit, to go back again when his hour comes.
He didn’t seem to think much of poor mother and Aileen in a general way, but now all of a sudden, because he took it into his head that the police were botherin’ them, unfair like, and coming about the place more than they had a right to do, he was like a ragin’ lion—worse, ever so much like a devil let loose out of hell. I felt regular frightened, just as if I’d been a boy again.
After a bit he gives a sort of gulp, and says to the old man, “The papers, the papers, Davy. It’s time we was off. I’ll send the half-caste chap next time.”
The shepherd reached up a bundle of newspapers, all tied up together with a bit of green hide, and turns to his sheep that was drawin’ off their camp and beginning to feed towards home.
“Hech; wad ye noo? Ye rintherout wastrel bodies in the lead—just rinning the inside oot o’ the tail, and a’ the fine steady sheep i’ the flock. Hey, Yarrow, far yawd, far yawd, lad, gang roond them, Yarrow, boy.”
One of the old dogs gets up and cuts away to the head of the flock like a Christian, sending back all the stray sheep that was makin’ off like a lot of cattle out of a yard. Then when they steadied and began to draw along quiet and feed as they go, he regular sits down with his mouth open, laughin’ to himself, the way dogs laugh, as much as to say, “I slewed ye there, old chaps.”
“I must be off, Davy, old man,” says father; “ye won’t see me agin for a bit, maybe. I’ll send next time.”
“Ben Marston—Poacher Ben?” says the old man, raising his hand, “something tells me yer’e gaun on the road to evil faster and fiercer than ye were wont—the braid path that leadeth to destruction. Aye—aye—were ye no tauld_ o’ that in your youth? I doot ye were tauld naething—joost naething—and this is the fruit. But gin ye turn from yer ways; even noo, at the eleventh hour, and repent; ye may be saved—saul and body; ye and your household. Think o’ laddie here, and his mither greetin’ at hame; and Aileen, that grand lassie; and Jeems, puir Jeems! Think on it, man; there’s a saul within yer sinfu’ carcass, and a heart. But, too, gin ane could find it. If ye quit not yer evil ways, the end will be woe—woe and death—woe and death. Noo gang yer ways in peace!”
Father nodded, and moved away at a pretty quick walk, and me with him. I looked back after a bit, and there was the old man standing still in the same place, with his hand raised up, and the afternoon sun blazing down on his white hair, brightening up the little green valley, the clear running water, even the very stones of the creek. He looked just like one of the old prophets that Aileen used to read to us about out of the Bible Sunday evenings, when we were boys. He was not speaking now, but his last words kept sounding in my ears: “Woe and death—woe and death—woe and death.” Father didn’t talk for a bit—not till we got near the horses, that we found all right where we left them. Then he says, “That’s a queer old card, ain’t he? I saved his little girl from drowning at sea, and he’s paid me over and over agin for doin’ a thing I couldn’t help. He’s about the second rale good man I ever seen. But he’s mad about religion and that—must be. He thinks a man like me can repent.”