XLIV
We mounted, and cleared then as quick as we could. We had wasted too much time, and thrown away a chance or two, as it was. Starlight and I said goodbye to Bella. Maddie wouldn’t show out again: said she’d a headache. So Joe was forced to make the best of it, and trust to better luck next time. Off we went—Joe on the right, poncho and all. It was the fun of the world; he looked the dead image of Jim. We yelled again, Starlight and I, and said we’d half a mind to bring him home to the Hollow, and see if dad would be taken in.
But it was near enough turning out no laughing matter for Joe. Just as we were turning off the road into a bit of clear ground we heard the rattle of horses’ hoofs, and a voice we knew sang out, “There they are, by Jove! that’s Jim Marston—I’d know him among a thousand.” With that Sir Ferdinand and half-a-dozen troopers dashed at us, like hawks at a brace of quail. As they came on, every man emptied his revolver.
We knew our horses had the foot of the police nags—bar Sir Ferdinand’s, which was a thoroughbred, in top condition. Not a ball touched us—men in the saddle must be very cool and steady to hit anything smaller than a haystack—so we didn’t want to make a fight of it. They were two to one, for one thing; and we were pretty sure to lose them, we thought, inside of ten miles, at any rate.
We just had time to have one look at poor Joe Moreton. It was rough on him. He was as game as the rest of us, but he hadn’t been used to be shot at—and, my word, they meant it, too. He felt that, for three bullets rattled his way just as Sir Ferdinand spoke.
Like Jim and most natives of his sort, he could ride above a bit; and, my word! he sat down on his horse, and the way he went through the timber was a caution. The old horse was fully fit, and not even Sir Ferdinand was our equal in scrub riding, and we hitting out for our lives, too. Lucky for us and Joe we got into an angle in the scrub, where the timber was that close a naked horse could hardly get through comfortable.
Before we’d gone five miles we steadied and listened. Sir Ferdinand and his troopers were clean out of sight; we couldn’t even hear their horses’ hoofs on the slaty ranges. Then we pulled up for a bit. There was no fear of Joe’s pulling up though; the last we saw of him he was standing in his stirrups crossing a bit of open ground and riding for dear life. He was out of sight pretty soon after. He knew every foot of ground between here and where he lived on the Fish River, over 40 miles away. So we made sure he’d be somewhere pretty close there before he drew rein. At his present pace all the police in New South Wales couldn’t catch him.
Starlight and I, first of all, looked well around for our landmarks, so as to make sure we shouldn’t be riding in a ring, and then stretched out for the Hollow, which we made a bit after sundown, and never saw a policeman all the way.
When we got in, father twigged at once that we’d had a brush for it, and began to swear at us for being such cursed fools as to run all manner of risks when there was no call to do it—not as if we made anything by it, but just for simple foolishness and brag. When he’d about done, all of a sudden he misses Jim, and he faces round on me as fierce as old Crib, and says, “What have ye done with the boy? If there’s anything happened to him, you can clear out, Dick Marston, and take your chance, for I won’t have ye next or anigh the place.”
I turned on him then, and gave it him back for a bit, because I was riled that everybody should always be thinking of Jim, while no one seemed to care a hang what became of me, except Gracey. Except Gracey! If it wasn’t for thinking of her sometimes, and how she stuck to me through thick and thin, I believe I’d have got that savage and desperate again all the world that I’d have turned out as bad as Moran himself.
That was what partly made him the wild beast he was, I r’aly believe. He always swore he’d been lagged innocent for his first offence, and had to do five years for stealing a horse he’d never seen. However, he’d shook many a one he never was had for, so that made it even. But, somehow, I’ve always found that a man thinks nothing much about doing time for what he knows he’s rightly punished for.
But he never forgets being made to suffer—and hard lines it is—for what he hasn’t done. And that injustice’ll rankle in a man’s heart for years and years—perhaps all his life—I and make him tenfold a worse criminal than he would have been. So there’s no mistake—magistrates and judges and all that lot ought to be as careful as they can; for, you’d better believe me, it’s far and away better to let two or three bad ’uns off now and again than to convict the wrong man.
However, Starlight stashed the row before long, and blew the old man up a bit for being venturesome himself and going out for the letters when any boy could have boned him, and then giving it, us for doing just the same thing.
“As it turns out,” he says, “Jim’s got the best chance for a getaway that he’d have had for five years if he’d stopped here; and if you cared half as much about him as anybody else in this world except your blessed old self, you’d be thankful to Dick and me for helping him on his road off; for, by George! if he’d been here another six months you’d have had to bury him alongside of old Devereux.”
Then he told father all about Jim driving the old gentleman down to Melbourne, and made such a good yarn out of Joe Moreton’s chivey and the way he looked round and made tracks when he heard the bullets fly about his ears, that old dad smoothed over a bit, and we had a glass of grog all round and turned in.
We’d got something to do to get through our mail this time. We’d had none on purpose all the time Aileen was with us. There were papers in heaps, and a good lot of letters. Dad said old Davy would hardly speak to him and kept on muttering, “Woe and death. Woe and death. He that sheddeth man’s blood,” and things like that. That was what set him on the booze when he got home, and he was vexed as well that there was no one to let him know what was in the letters and read the papers to him. Well, I don’t wonder he was a bit crabbed, having to stop by himself for a couple of days, with nothing but his own thoughts—and what jolly companions they must have been—and a lot of papers alongside of him that he could have took off his mind with; and no way of getting a word or a sound out of them. I think about these things now, but I didn’t then.
My word! it must be awful rough on man or woman, when you come to think of it, not to be able to read. Writing isn’t wanted so much, though. It’s handy enough of course. But just to think what dreadful dull times of it people must have that never can take a book or a newspaper in their hands to pass away an hour, or find out what’s going on in the world, or even round about where they live.
Work fills up a lot of the time with people like us, but men and women can’t always be working. It they’re ever so stanch, at the collar there’s a gall sometimes, or a bout of sickness, or a holiday, when they’re drove back upon themselves, and what in the world are they to do? They can’t always find people to talk to, and men like father—and there’s more like him—ain’t particular fond of talking at the best of times.
A day comes when they’re tired out with working, and lonely and miserable, or dead beat and at odds with everything. All that, whether it’s man or woman, makes ’em wild for a change—a change of any kind, it don’t matter I what—and drink gives it to ’em. They do drink of course, ten times more than if they had their minds fed up, full and plenty, and I don’t wonder at it, nor no man that knows I what men and women really are. I There’s a lot talked and written in the papers and books nowadays about educating the people, the whole people, all kinds and sorts, learning ’em to read and write, and cipher, and other things as well, and leaving the parents and the priests to teach ’em religion. Some people think the religion ought to come first and the reading and writing afterwards. I don’t hold with anything of the sort.
Men and women that can read and search about and think for themselves are more likely to get some sort of religion that’ll keep ’em out of harm’s way, at any rate, than those that’s had their religion drilled into them, and know nothing else. It’s best to have both. I know that. But keeping a child from learning to read and write is like putting out his eyes for fear he might want to walk about and take the wrong road, and be dashed to bits down a drop. A man that has his eyes may go wrong—he often does—like our lot, but a blind man must go wrong, you’d think, or else must have someone to lead him about, a dog or a child, all his life. If it comes to the gaols, you’ll find a lot more in them that can’t read than of what’s called educated people that’s gone wrong. If it’s nothing else, people that’s had a bit of teaching knows very well that it don’t pay to go on the cross. It hurts them more than the others when they are punished, and it shows ’em fifty ways to one of passing their lives in something like the way God meant ’em to be passed.
Well, that’s sermon enough for once; but a cove that’s shut up like me gets think—think—thinking about matters here and there, till he gets chock full of notions on one point or other, and out it must come. So now you’ve had mine; and I wish—don’t I wish it—couldn’t I die cheerful and steady—if I’d only acted up to half or a quarter of ’em.
There was a lot of papers, and some letters too; as much as gave us all a morning’s work to do to open and read half of ’em. Father had a lot, as usual, from all kinds of chaps on the cross, some about horses and cattle, some with a line or two putting him up to where the police was hunting for us, and letting us know about a trap or two that had been set.
There was a tremendous blow up about Hagan and his lot, of course. The papers were full of letters, asking if the country was to be delivered over to assassins and highwaymen, and advising the citizens to roll themselves up into vigilance committees, and execute a little of that justice themselves which the Government was too weak and inefficient to administer. Of course there was a bit of a fuss made for a while, and then everything went on the same as before.
As for the police themselves—the regular force—they knew that officers and men had been doing their level best for months and months past, and that they couldn’t have worked a stroke harder, or ridden a yard further if the reward had been ten thousand pounds a man instead of one. Night and day, Sundays and Saturdays, hot or cold, wet or dry, they were always at it, and many a man got that which made an old man of him before his time, if it didn’t cook him altogether before the year was out. Of course they did their best to ferret out the way Hagan and his mates had been killed, but they didn’t altogether feel pleased with any of these outsiders who went in for the reward, and tried to take their own work out of their hands. So when they got it hot, like Hagan’s party did, the police thought it might act as a warning to the public generally to mind their own business, and not cut in to do work that they weren’t paid for.
As for the diggers, they were the great army in occupation of all New South Wales and Port Phillip just then. They didn’t trouble their heads much about it after a week. As long as the claims paid well, a few men killed more or less made no great difference. It was the business of the Government of the country to straighten that kind of thing. As long as diggers were let alone and nobody tried to take their gold from them, they didn’t so much care about a few stores or banks or stations being robbed. All the time Burke and Daly, Moran, Wall, and Lardner were cruising about the Southern and Western roads, and at all sorts of points between the two, keeping all the police on the move and driving all the squatters and steady-going people wild, as nobody knew whose turn it might be next.
Besides this, a lot of half-bred duffers, something between horse-stealers and bushrangers, used to run out now and again when they saw a good chance, blacken their faces or wear masks, perhaps ride 30 or 40 miles from their own farms, stick up a coach or a traveller that they knew had money, and then back again, and be ploughing or milking next day just as peaceable and honest-looking as you please. Every now and then these fellows would be caught, and recognised very simple too. Some of them had stopped and robbed some Chinamen coming from a goldfield. One fellow held a pistol to their heads, while his mate searched them. John didn’t say much, but those cross-eyes of theirs were reckoning up the chap pretty sharp and quiet.
Next day the head man goes to the police inspector and gives him as good description as he could, considering they both wore masks, finishing up with “that piecee man holdim pistol lide ’em horse welly big bit.” Here John put his fingers into his own opium-trap.
“By George,” says the inspector to the sergeant, “that must be Johnny Dickson. Where was it we noticed a chap with a curb-bit last week? He must have got it for nothing, too; for none of these snaffle-dragging natives would ever waste money in buying a double bridle.”
Just as he spoke down comes the very fellow, riding along to a pound sale, looking as respectable and innocent as if he was going to buy seed potatoes, and never had a notion outside of his cultivation paddock. Out walks the sergeant, and beckons to him.
“Come here, Johnny. Have you seen a gray horse down your way? That’s a fine strong bit you’ve got—does your horse pull hard?”
The Chinaman shows himself then, and Johnny begins to look rather mixed.
“That piecee man lob me, lob Ah Sing, lob Ah You, one piecee day; allee same bit, all same blidle. You see em,” yells John. “You catchee him, sarjin; him wellee bad man, lobbee like hellee.”
“Better come in, Johnny, and talk it over,” says the sergeant, keeping a friendly hold of his bridle-rein. “Very likely there’s nothing in it. But we’ll have to search you.”
Johnny would have made a bolt if he could, and have knocked Ah Mow’s brains out with the stirrup-iron; but it was no go. There were two revolvers dead on him before he could draw, and as some of the Chinaman’s money was on him, and a gold ring or two which he was fool enough to carry, he was committed for trial, found guilty at the Circuit Court, and got l5 years. His mate was never caught, though the police knew pretty well who he was; but there wasn’t evidence enough against him. He wasn’t fool enough to ride to those sort of picnics with a bridle that any child could swear to half a mile off.
Every now and then a few of the “offside drivers,” as the natives called them, would be collared by a fluke but in spite of all they could do, all our lot seemed to laugh at the police, while Moran and the rest rode over the whole countryside as if it was their own, and robbed and ravaged from Mudgee to Bathurst, and from Goulburn to Albury, and back again.
Once Moran caught a squatter that he had a down on a good way from his own run, near Albury. He watched him coming down into a crossing-place and sat behind a rock till he was down close. Then he muzzled him, and made him get off his horse.
“Oh! you’re Matson, are ye?” he drawls out. “So you’ve been pounding the Piney Range boys’ horses, have yer?” (These were a lot of horse-stealers, mates of Moran’s, and old pals.) “Now, if you do that again, I’ll shoot yer, d’ye hear? D⸺n yer, I’ve more than half a mind to shoot yer now. I think I will, too.”
Then he took out his revolver and cocked it. Mr. Matson didn’t feel happy, I daresay, before a fellow that would rather shoot a man than not. Moran looks at him for four or five minutes, and then drawls, “I’ll not shoot yer today; but by ⸻, if ever you pound one of them chaps’ horses I’ll ride five hundred miles to do it. You can go now. Hallo! Stop a bit. I’ve heard you’re an out-and-out stepdancer. Just you take a turn on that bit of grass there, and don’t you slum it, for I’m a judge.”
When the others came back, Daly and them, there was Moran sitting on a log smoking, and his revolver by him, and Matson dancing away like a mad monkey, the perspiration rolling down his cheeks, and his eyes starting out of his head.
They persuaded Moran to cut the show short, and Mr. Matson was never so glad to get clear away from any little party in his life.
Once they were rather sold. I used to chaff Moran about it when we met, and it always made him that savage he’d have shot me if he dared. Four of them were mooching about a public-house on the Southern road, not far from Murrumburrah, when they saw a buggy coming quietly along from the valley below. They heard that a gentleman was coming past that day, a big station-owner down the river, and they meant to make a haul out of him.
Now, this Mr. M’Crae was a man that had a great objection to being interfered with; besides that, he wasn’t a likely man to go out of his way for anybody, gentle or simple. He’d heard about these chaps being somewhere about his line of road, so he provided himself with a first-chop repeating rifle before he left Sydney, plenty of cartridges, and two or three books—he was as great a chap for reading as ever I seen. I used to shear for him once—and then starts away for the station with only a boy with him, just the same as usual.
Well, they cut away through the bush and went out wide, coming into the road behind him, and began to close him up. As soon as he sees this, he gets out of the buggy and tells the boy to walk the horse quietly up the hill. He picks his man, takes a steady pot at Moran, who was riding ahead, and dashed near tumbled him. The bullet went so close that the wind of it half turned him round. The second shot touched the mane of Daly’s horse. They didn’t wait for the third, but hooked it out into the timber.
Then they tried coming up on the outside; but the moment they got within range he made such rattling good practice at them that they saw if they came any closer he’d empty half their saddles, if he didn’t do more, before they could rush him. So they thought a gold watch and a £5-note or two (squatters never carry much cash, because they can cash their cheques anywhere) wasn’t good enough for the risk.
So they hauled off and left him to finish his journey in peace. He stopped at the public-house an hour, fed his horses, and lunched himself. Then he went on quiet, and they never troubled him after.