CHAPTER XXI Daylight broke when we were close up to the Black Range, safe enough, a little off the line, but nothing to signify. Then we hit off the track that led over the gap and down into a little flat on a creek that ran the same way as ours did. Jim had managed for father and Waragul to meet us somewhere near here with fresh horses. There was an old shepherd hut that stood by itself, almost covered with marshmallows and metals. As we came down the steep track, a dog came up snuffing and searching about the grass and stones, as if he'd lost something. It was crib. Now we're getting home, Jim, says Starlight. It's quite a treat to see the old scamp again. Well, old man, he says to the dog, how's all getting on at the hollow? The dog came right up to Rainbow and rubbed against his fedlock and jumped up two or three times to see if he could touch his rider. He was almost going to bark, he seemed that glad to see him and us. Dad was sitting on a log by the hut, smoking just the same as he was before he left us last night. He was holding two fresh horses, and we were not sorry to see them. Horses are horses, and there wasn't much left in our tube. We must have ridden a good 80 miles that night in it. It was as bad as a hundred by daylight. Father came a step toward us as we jumped off. By George, I was that stiff with the long ride in the cold that I nearly fell down. He got a bit of a fire, so we lit our pipes and had a comfortable smoke. I don't know if you're back again, I see, he says. Pretty pleasant for him. Glad to see you, Captain, once more. It's been a long some work. Nobody with me and Jim and why I go.  I don't mind to roll into him once or twice, and I should too, only for his being your property. Thank you, Ben. I'll knock his head off myself as soon as we get settled a bit. Radical's not a bad boy, but a good deal like a Rocky Mountain Mule. He's no good unless he's knocked down about once a month or so. Only, he doesn't like anyone but me to do it. You'll see him about a mile on, such body. He told me he'd be behind the big rock where the tree grows on the left of the road. He said he'd get you a fresh horse, so he could take Rainbow back to the Hollow the long way round. Sure enough, after we just got well on the road again, Warrigal comes quietly out from behind the big granite boulder and shows himself. He was riding Bilba and leading a well-bred, good-looking chestnut. He was one of the young ones out of the Hollow. He'd broken him and got him quiet. I remember when I was there first, spotting him as a yearling.  Warrigal jumps off Bilba and throws down the bridle. Then he leads the chestnut up to where Starlight was standing, smoking it. Throws himself down at his feet, bursting out, crying like child. He was just like a dog that had found his master again. He kept looking up at Starlight just like a dog doesn't, smiling and going on, just as if he never expected to see such a good thing again as long as he lived. Well, Warrigal says, Starlight, very careless like, so you brought me a horse, I see. You've been a very good boy. Take Rainbow round the long way into the Hollow. Look after him, whatever you do, or I'll murder you. Not that he's done or anything near it, but had enough for one ride for old man. Off with you. He changed to saddle and Warrigal hopped on to Bilba and led off Rainbow. He tossed his head and trotted away as if he'd lots to spare and hadn't had twelve hours under saddle. Best part without a halter of bait. I've seen a few goodens in my time, but I never saw the horse that was a patch on Rainbow. Take him all around. We pushed on again then for ten miles and somewhere about eight o'clock we pulled up at home. At home. Eileen knew we were coming and ran out to meet us. She threw her arms around me and kissed and cried over me forever so long before she took any notice of Starlight, who got down and was looking another way. Oh, my boy, my boy, she said. I never thought to see you again for years. Nothing you've got to fail in, strangely. You're not like your old self at all. But you're in the bush again now, by God's blessing. We must hide you better next time. I declare I begin to feel quite wicked as if I could fight the police myself. Well, spoken is Marston, said Starlight, just lifting his hat and then making a bit of a bow-like, just as if she was a real lady. But he was the same to all women. He treated them all alike, with the same respect of manner as if they were duchesses. Younger old, gentler, simple, it made no odds to him.  I shouldn't like to say. Eileen looked at him, surprised and angry like for a second. Then she says, Captain Starlight, it's too late now. But words can never tell how I hate and despise the whole thing. My love for Dick got the better of my reason for a bit, but I couldn't. Why, how pale you look! He was growing pale and no mistake. He'd been ill for a bit before he left Burima. Though he wouldn't give in. And the ride was rather too much for him, I suppose. Anyhow, down he tumbles in a dead faint. Eileen rushed over and lifted up his head. I got some water and dabbed it over him after a bit. He did come too. He raises himself on his elbows and looked at Eileen then. He smiles quietly and says, I'm quite ashamed myself. I'm growing as delicate as a young lady. I hope I haven't given you much trouble. When he got up and walked to the veranda, he quite staggered, showing he was that weak as he could hardly walk without help. I should be all right, he said, after a week's riding again. And where are you going when you leave this place, she asked. Surely you and my brothers never can live in New South Wales after all this past.  You'll have something of us with all on. We made out that there was no great chance of our being run into at the old place. Father went on first with Crib. He was sure to get warning in some way, best known to Father himself, if there was anyone about that wasn't the right sort. So we went up and went in. Mother was inside. I thought it was queer that she didn't come outside. She was always quick enough about that when we came home before day or night. When I went in, I could see when she got up from her chair that she was weak and looked as if she'd been ill. In fact, she looked ever so much older, and her hair was a lot rarer than it used to be. She held out her hands and clung round my neck as if I'd been raised from the dead. So I was in a kind of way, but she didn't say much or ask what I was going to do next. For soul, she knew it couldn't be much good anyway, and that if we were hunted before, we'd be worse hunted now. Those that hadn't heard of our little game with the Monberra cattle would hear of our getting out of Burima Gowl, which wasn't done every day. We hadn't a deal of time to spare because we meant to start off for the hollow that afternoon and get there some time in the night, even if it was late. Jim and Dad knew the way in, almost blindfolded. Once we got there, we could sleep for a week if we liked to take it easy all roads. So Father told Mother and Eileen straight that we'd come for a good, comfortable meal and a rest, and we must be off again. Oh, Father, can't Dick and Jim stop for a day? cries out Eileen.  Do you want to have us all took the same as last time, growls bother? Women's never contented, as I can see, for two pins I wouldn't have brought them this way at all. I don't want to be making roads from this old crib to the hollow only I thought you'd like one look at Dick. We must do what's best, of course, for Eileen. But it's hard, very hard on us. It's Mother I'm thinking of, you know. If you knew how she always wakes up in the night and calls for Dick and cries when she wakes up, you'd try to comfort her a bit more, Father. Comfort her, says Dad. Why, what can I do? Don't I tell you if we stay about here we're shopped as safe as anything ever was? Well, that comforter, are you either? We're safe today because I've got telegraphs on the outside that the police can't pass without ringing the bell, in a way of speaking. But you see, tomorrow there'll be more than one lot here, and I want to be clean away before they come. You know best, says Eileen. But suppose they came here tomorrow morning at daylight as they did last time and bring a black tracker with them. Won't he be able to follow up your track when you go away tonight? No, he won't. For this reason, we shall all ride different waves as soon as we leave here. A good while before we get near the place where we all meet, we shall find Waragawa and look up. He can take the captain in by another track, and there'll be only Jim and I and the old dog and the only three persons that'll go in the near way. And when shall we see any of you again? Somewhere's about a month, I suppose, if we've luck. As a deal belongs to them, you'd better go and see what there is for us to eat. We've a long way and a rough way to go before we get to the hollow. Eileen was off at this, and then she's had to work in late a clean tablecloth and the sitting room and set us down our meal, breakfast or whatever it was. It wasn't so bad. Corned beef, first raked potatoes, fresh damper, milk, butter, eggs, tea, of course. It's the great drink in the bush. And although some doctors say it's no good, what would bushmen do without it? We had no intention of stopping the whole night though we were tempted to do so, to have one night's rest in the old place where we used to sleep so sound before. It was no good thinking of anything of that kind anyhow for a good while to come. What we've got to do is to look out sharp and not be caught simple again like we was both last time. After we had our tea, we sat outside the veranda and tried to make the best of it. Jim stayed inside with mother for a good while. She didn't leave her chair much now and sat knitting by the hour together. There was a great change come over her lately. She didn't seem to be afraid of our getting caught as she used to be, nor half as glad or sorry about anything. It seemed like as if she'd made up her mind that everything was as bad as it could be in past mythic. So it was. She was right enough there. The only one who was in real good heart and spirits was Starlight. He'd come round again and talked and rattled away and made Irene and Jim and me laugh in spite of everything. He said we had all fine times before us now for a year or two anyway. That was a good long time. After that anything might happen. What it would be he neither knew nor cared. Life was made up of short bits. Sometimes it was hard luck. Sometimes everything went jolly and well. We'd got our liberty again. Our horses and a place to go to where all the police in the country would never find us. He was going in for a short life and a merry one. He for one was tired of small adventures and he was determined to make the name of Starlight a little more famous before very long. If Dick and Jim would take his advice, advice of a desperate ill-fated outcast, but still staunch to his friends, they would clear out and leave him to sink or swim alone or with such associates as he might pick up, whose destination would be no great matter whatever the film. They could go into hiding for a while, make for Queensland, and then go into the northern territory. There was new country enough there to hide all the fellas that were wanted in New South Wales. But why don't you take your own advice, says Eileen, looking over at Starlight, as he sat there quite careless and comfortable looking, as if he'd no call to trouble his head about anything. Isn't your life worth mending a saving?  If you ask me, Miss Marston, he said, whether my life, what is left of it, is worth saving, I must distinctly answer that it is not. It's like the last coin or two in the gambler's purse, not worth troubling one's head about. It must be flung on the board with the rest. Might land a reasonable stake, but as to economising and arranging details that would surely be the greatest folly of all. I heard Eileen sigh to herself. She said nothing for a while, and then old Cribb began to growl. He got up and walked along the track that led up the hill. Father stood up, too, and listened. We all did except Starlight, who appeared to think it was too much trouble and never moved or seemed to notice. Presently the dog came walking slowly back and coiled himself up again close to Starlight. As if he'd made up his mind, it didn't matter. We could hear a horse coming along at a pretty good bat over the hard rocky gravelly road. We could tell it was a single horse and more than that a barefooted one, coming at a hand gallop up hill and down dale in a careless kind of manner. This wasn't likely to be a police trooper. One man wouldn't come by himself to a place like ours at night. And no trooper, if he did come, would clatter along a hard track, making row enough to be heard more than a mile off on a quiet night. It's all right, says Father. The old dog noted him. It's Billy the boy. There's something up. Just as he spoke, we saw a horseman come into sight, and he rattled down the stony track as hard as he could lick. He pulled up just opposite the house, close by where we were standing. It was a boy, about fifteen, dressed in a ragged pair of mulled-skinned trousers—a good deal too large for him—but kept straight by a leather strap round the waist. An old cabbage-tree hat and a blue-surge shirt made up the rest of his rig. Bootsy head on, but they didn't seem to be fellas, and one rusty spur. His hair was like a hay-colored mop, half hanging over his eyes, which looked sharp enough to see through a gum-tree and out at the other side. He jumped down and stood before us while his horse's flanks heaved up and down like a pair of bellows. Well, what's up, says Father? My word, Governor, you was all in a great luck as I come home last night, after being away with them cattle to pound. Bobby, he didn't know a policeman from a wooden-water joey. He'd never have dropped they was coming here, unless they pasted up a notice on the door. How did you find out, Billy, says Father? And when will they be here? First thing in the morning, says the young wit, grinning all over his face.  Which ones was they, asks Father, filling his bike quite business-like, just as if he got days to spare? Them two fellas from Bargo, one of them's new chum, got his hair cut short just like dicks. My word, I thought he'd been wagging it from some of them government institutions. I did rally, dig old man. You've precious, free, and easy, my young friends, says Starlight, walking over.  You have a keen sense of humor, evidently. But can't you say how you found out that the men were Her Majesty's police officers in pursuit of us? You're Captain Starlight, I suppose, says the youngster, looking straight and square at him and not a bit put out. Well, I've been pretty quick coming thirty miles inside of three hours, I'll be bound. I heard them talking about you. It was Starlight this and Starlight that all the time I was going in and out of the room. Pretendin' to look for something, and Mother scolded me. Had they their uniform on, I asked. No fear, they thought we didn't tumble, I expect, but I seen their horses hangin' up outside. Both shod all round, bits and irons bright. Stabled horses, too, I could swear. Then the youngest chap, him with the old-fell hat, walked like this. Here he squared his shoulders, put his hands by his side, and marched up and down, looking for all the word like one of them chaps that plays at soldiering in Bargo. There's no hiding the military air, you think, Billy, said Starlight. That fellow was a recruit, and had been drilled lately. I don't know, Mother got him to stay, and began to talk quite innocent like of the bad characters there was in the country. It was as good as a play. Then they began to talk almost right out about Sergeant Goring having been away in a wrong scent, and how wild he was, and how he'd be after Starlight's mob demoral morning at daylight. And some police was to meet him near Rocky Flat. They didn't say they was the police. That was about four o'clock and gettin' dark. How did you get the horse? says Jim. He's not one of yours, is he? Not he, says the boy. Wish I had him or the likes of him. He belongs to old driver. I was just workin' at how I'd get out and catch our old mok' without these chaps bein' fly as I was goin' to telegraph. When Mother says to me, Have you fetched in the black cow?  I says, No, I couldn't find her. You catch old Johnny Smoker and look for her till you do find there if it's ten o'clock tonight, says Mother, very fierce. Your father'll give you a fine larrapin' if he comes home and there's that cow lost. So off I goes, and man's old Johnny in clears out straight for here. When I came to drivers, runs his horses up into a yard, and I the angle of his outside paddock and collared this little horse. And let's old Johnny go and hobbles. My word, this cove can scratch. So it seems, says Starline, here's a sovereign for your youngster. Keep your ears and eyes open, you'll always find that good information brings a good price. I'd advise you to keep away from Mr. Marston, senior, and people of his sort, and stick to your work, if I thought there was the least earthly chance if you're doing so. But I see plainly that you're not cut out for the industrious, steady going line. Not if I know it, said the boy. I want to see life before I die. I'm not going to keep on milling and slaving day after day all the year round. I'll cut it next year, sure as a gun. I say, won't you let me ride a bit of the way with you? Not a yard, says Father, who was pretty cranky by this time. You go home again and put that horse where you got him. We don't want old driver tracking and swearing after us because you ride his horses. And keep off the road as you go back. Billy the boy nodded his head and jumped into a saddle, rode off again at much about the same pace he'd come at. He was a regular recklessly young devil as bold as a two-year-old cold in a brandon yard that's ready to jump at anything and knock his brains out against a stockyard post just because he's never known any real regular herd or danger and can't realize it. He was terrible cruel to horses and would ruin a horse in less time than any man or boy I ever seen. I always thought from the first that he'd come to a bad end. Howsoever he was a wonderful chap to track and ride, none could beat him at that. He was nearly as good as Waragel in the bush.  But no one ever stirred within twenty or thirty miles of where he lived without our hearing about it. Father fished him out having paid him pretty well for some small service, and ever after that he said he could sleep in the peace. We had the horses up, ready saddled and fed by sundown and as soon as the moon rose we made a start for it. I had time for a bit of a talk with Eileen about the store fields, though I couldn't bring myself to say their names at first. I was right in thinking that Gracie had seen me let away as a prisoner by the police. She came into the hut afterwards with Eileen as soon as mother was better, and the two girls sat down beside one another and cried their eyes out, Eileen said. George's store field had been very good and told Eileen that whatever happened to us or the old man it would make no difference to him or to his feelings toward her. She thanked him, but said she could never consent to let him disgrace himself by marrying into a family like ours. He'd come over every now and then and had seen they wanted for nothing when father and Jim were away. But she always felt her heart growing colder toward him and his prosperity while we were so low down in every way. As for Gracie, she, Eileen, believed that she was in love with me in a quiet, steady way of her own, without showing it much, but that she would be true to me if I asked her to the end of the world, and she was sure that she could never marry anyone else as long as I lived. She was that sort of girl. So didn't I think I ought to do everything I could to get a better character and try and be good enough for such a girl? She knew girls pretty well. She didn't think there was such another girl in the whole colony, so on. And when we went away, where were we going to hide? I could not say about particular distances, but I told her generally that we'd keep out of harm's way and be careful not to be caught. We might see her and mother now and then, and by bush telegraphs and other people we could trust should be able to send news about ourselves. What's the captain going to do, she said suddenly. He doesn't look able to bear up against our ship like the rest of you. What beautiful small hands he has and his eyes are like sleeping fires. Oh, he's a good deal stronger than he looks, I said. He's the smartest of a lot of us except its dad, and I've heard the old man say he must knock under to him.  He's quite able to take care of himself. And the lesser girl likes you, thinks about a man like him the better for her. Oh, nonsense, she said at the same time, looking down in a half-infused sort of way. I'm not likely to think about him or anyone else just now. But it seems such a dreadful thing to think a man like him so clever and daring and so handsome and gentle in his ways should be obliged to lead such a life haunted from place to place like a bush-ranger, I said. For that'll be the long and short of it. You may as well know it now. We're going to turn out. You don't say that, Dick, she said. Oh, surely you'll never be so mad.  If you do, why not take a knife or an axe and do it at once? Her you've been killing all along, as for me I feel so miserable and degraded and despairing at times that, but for her I could go and drown myself in the creek when I think of what the family is coming to. What's the use of going on like that, Eileen, I said roughly? If we're caught now, whatever we do, great or small, we're safe for years and years and gull. May it we as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb? What odds can it make? We'd only have bolder work than duffering cattle and faking horse-brands like a lot of miserable crawlers that are not game for any more sporting.  Surely the devil has power for a season to possess himself with the souls of men, and do with them what he will. I know how obstinate you are, Dick. Pray, God, you may not have poor Jim's blood to answer for as well as your own before all is gone. Good-bye.  But may he turn your heart from all wicked ways, keep you from the worst, deadlier evil than you've committed. Good-night. Why, why didn't we all die when we were little children? End of Chapter 21, Recording by Mike Harris I brought it out sudden like to Ilean before I could stop myself, but it was all true. How are we to make the first start if we couldn't agree? But we were bound to make another big touch, and this time the police would be after us for something worthwhile. Anyhow, we could take it easy at the hollow for a bit and settle all the ins and outs without hurrying ourselves. Our dart now was to get to the hollow that night some time, and not to leave much of a track, either. Nobody had found out the place yet and wasn't going to, if we knew. It was too useful a hiding place to give away without trouble, and we swore to take all sorts of good care to keep it secret if it was to be done by the art of man. We went up Nullah Mountain the same way as we remembered doing when Jim and I rode to meet Father. That time he had a lot of weeners. We kept wide and didn't follow on after one another, so as to make a marked trail. It was a long, dark, dreary ride.  There was no fetching a doctor if anyone was hurt. Father rode ahead. He knew the ins and outs of the road better than any of us. Though Jim, who had lived most of his time in the hollow after he got away from the police, was getting to know it pretty well, too. We were obliged to go slow, mostly, for a good deal of the track lay along the bed of a creek full of boulders and rocks that we had to cross ever so many times in a mile.  It was far into the night when we got to the old yard. There it stood just as I recollect, saying at the time Jim and I and Father branded the weeners. It had only been used once or twice since. It was patched up a bit in places, but nobody seemed to have gone next or nigh it for a long time. The grass had grown up round the slip-rails. It was as strange and forsaken looking as if it belonged to a deserted station. As we rode up, a man comes out from an angle of the fence and gives a whistle. We knew, almost without looking, that it was Waragel. He'd come there to meet Starlight and take him round some other way. Every track and shortcut there was in the mountains was as easy to him as the road to George store fields was to us. Nullamountain was full of curious gullies and caves and places that the devil himself could hardly have run a man to ground in, unless he'd lived near it all his life as Waragel had. He wasn't very free in showing them to us, but he'd have made a bridge of his own body any time to let Starlight go safe. So when they rode away together we knew he was safe whoever might be after us, and that we should see him in the hollow sometime next day. We went on for a mile or two farther. Then we got off and turned our horses loose. The rest of the way we had to go on foot. My horse and Jim's had got regularly broke into Rocky Flat, and we knew that they'd go home as sure as possible. Not quite straight, but keeping somewhere in the right direction. As for Father, he always used to keep a horse or two trained to go home when he'd done with him. The pony he rode to-night would just trot off and never put his nose to the ground almost till he got wind of home. We humped our saddles and swags ourselves. A stiffish load too, but the night was cool and we did our best. There was no use growling. It had to be done in the sooner the better. It seemed a long time following Father's step by step before we came to the place where I thought the cattle were going to be driven over the precipice. Here we pulled up for a bit and had a smoke.  Three o'clock in the morning the stars in the sky and it was so clear that we could see Nullamount rising up against it. A big black lump without sign of tree or rock. Underneath the valley one sea of mist and we've just gone to drop into it. On the other side of the hollow, the clear hills we call the Sugarloaf. Everything seemed dead, silent, and solitary, and a rummier start than all. Here were we three desperate men driven to make ourselves a home in this lonesome god-forsaken place. I wasn't very fanciful by that time, but if the devil had risen up to make a fourth among us, I shouldn't have been surprised. The place, the time, and the men seemed regularly cut out for him and his mob. We smoked our pipes out and said nothing to each other, good or bad. Then Father makes a start and we follows him. Took a goodish while, but we got down all right and headed for the cave. When we got there our troubles were over for a while. Jim struck a match and had a fire going in no time. There was plenty of dry wood, of course. Then Father rolls a keg out of a hole in the wall, first-rate dark brandy it was, and we felt a sight better for a good stiff nip all around. When a man's cold and tired and hungry and down on his luck as well, a good cock or a grog don't do him no harm to speak of. It strings him up and puts him straight. If he's anything of a man, he can stand it, feel all the better for it.   I've heard men say it, and knew they meant it.  We were none of us like that, not then anyhow. We could take it or leave it, and though Dad could do with his share when it was going, he always knew what he was about and could put the peg in any time. So we had one strong-ish taut while the tea was boiling. There was a bag of ship biscuit. We fried some hung beef and made a jolly good supper. We were that tired we didn't care to talk much, so we made up the fire last thing and rolled ourselves in our blankets. I didn't wake till the sun had been up an hour or more. I woke first. Jim was fast asleep, but Dad had been up a goodish while and got things ready for breakfast. It was a fine, clear morning. Everything looked beautiful, especially to me that had been locked up away from this sort of thing so long. The grass was thick and green round the cave and right up to the big sandstone slabs of the floor, looking as if it had never been eaten down very close. No more it had. It would never have paid to have overstocked the hollow. What cattle and horses they kept there had a fine time of it and were always in good condition. Opposite where we were the valley was narrow. I could see the sandstone precipices that Walda sent, a sort of yellowish white color, all lighted up with the rays of the morning sun, looking like gold towers against the heavy green forest timber at the foot of them. Birds were calling and whistling and there was a little spring that fell, drip, drip over a rough rock basin all covered with ferns.  It was a pretty enough sight that met my eyes on waking.  Jim soon woke up and stretched himself, then father began quite cheerful like, Well, boys, what do you think of the hollow again? It's not a bad earth for the old dog Fox and his cubs when the hounds have run him close.  We've no call to do anything but rest ourselves for a week or two anyhow. Then we must settle on something and buckle to it more business-like. We've been too helter-skelter lately, Jim and I. We was beginning to run risks. Got nearly dropped on more than once. There's no mistake. It's a grand thing to wake up and know you've got nothing to do for a bit, but to take it easy and enjoy yourself. No matter how light your work may be, if it's regular and has to be done every day, the harness will gall somewhere. You get tired in time and sick of the whole thing. Jim and I knew well that bar accidents we were as safe in the hollow as we used to be in our beds when we were boys. We'd searched it through and through last time till we'd come to believe that only three or four people, and those sometimes not for years at a time, had ever been inside it. There were no tracks of more. We could see how the first gang levied they were different. Every now and then they had a big drink, a mad carouse, as the books say, when they must have done wild, strange things, something like the Spanish main buccaneers we'd read about. They'd brought captives with them too. We saw graves, half a dozen together in one place. They didn't belong to the band. We had a quiet comfortable meal and a smoke afterwards. Then Jim and I took a long walk through the hollow so as to tell one another what was in our minds, which we hadn't a chance to do before. Before we'd gone far, Jim pulls a letter out of his pocket and gives it to me. It's no use sending it to you, old man, while you was in the jug, Jim said. It was quite bad enough without this, so I thought I'd keep it till we were settled a bit like. Now we're going to set up in business on our own account. You'd best look over your mail. I knew the writing well, though I hadn't seen it lately. It was from her, from Kate Morrison, that was. It began, not the way most women write, like her, though. So this is the end of your high and mighty doings, Richard Marston, passing yourself and Jim off as squatters. I don't blame it. No, of course not. Nobody ever blamed Jim or would, I suppose, if he'd burned down Government House and stuck up his excellency as he was coming out of church. But when I saw on the papers that you'd been arrested for cattle stealing, I knew for the first time how completely Gee and I had been duped. I won't pretend that I didn't think of the money you were said to have and how pleasant it would be to spend some of it after the miserable, scrambling, skimping life we had lately been used to. But I loved you, Dick Marston, for yourself, with a deep and passionate love which you will never know now, which you would scorn and treat lightly, perhaps if you did know. You may yet find out what you have lost, if ever you get out of that frightful gull. I was not such a silly fool as to pine and fret over our romance so cruelly disturbed, though genie was it nearly broke her heart. No, Richard, my nature is not of that make. I generally get even with people who wrong me. I send you a photo giving you a fair idea of myself and my husband, Mr. Mollickson. I accept his offer soon after I saw your adventures and those of your friends Starlight and every newspaper in the colonies. I did not hold myself bound to live single for your sake, so did what most women do, though they pretend to act from other motives. I disposed of myself to the best advantage. Mr. Mollickson has plenty of money which is nearly everything in this world, so that I am comfortable and well off as far as that goes. If I am not happy, that is your fault. Your fault, I say, because I am not able to tear your false image and false self from my thoughts. Whatever happens to me in the future, you may consider yourself to blame for it. I should have been a happy and fairly good woman as far as women go. If you had been true, or rather if everything about you had not been utterly false and despicable. You think it fortunate, after reading this idea, say that we are separated forever. But we may meet again, Richard Marston. Then you may have reason to curse the day, as I do most heartily, that you first set eyes on Kate Mollickson. Well, not a pleasant letter, but by no manner of means. I was glad I didn't get it when I was eating my heart out under the stifling low roof of the cell at Noma, or when I was bearing my load at Barima. A few pounds more when the weight was all I could bear and live would have crushed the heart out of me. I didn't want anything to cross me when I was looking at Mother and Eileen and thinking howl between us. We'd done everything our worst enemy could have wished us to do. But here, when there was plenty of time to think over old days and plan for the future, I could bear the savage, spiteful sound of the whole letter and laugh at the way she had got out of her troubles by taking up with a rough old fellow whose check-book was the only decent thing about him. I wasn't sorry to be rid of her, either, since I'd seen Gracie Storfield again. Every other woman seemed disagreeable to me. I tore up the letter and threw it away, hoping I had done forever with a woman that no man living would ever have been the better for. Jim says, glad you take it so quiet, after holding his tongue longer than he did, mostly. She's a bad, cold-hearted jade, although she is Jeannie's sister. If I thought my girl was like her, she'd never have another thought from me, but she isn't. It never was. The worst luck I've had the closer she stuck to me, like a little brick as she is. I'd give all I ever had in the world if I could go to her and say, Here I am, Jim Marston, without a penny in the world, but I can look every man in the face and we'll work our way along the road of life, cheerful and loving together. But I can't say it, Dick. That's the devil of it. And it makes me so wild sometimes that I could knock my brains out against the first iron bark tray I come across. I didn't say anything, but I took hold of Jim's hand and shook it. We looked in each other's eyes for a minute. There was no call to say anything. We always understood one another, Jim and I. As we were safe to stop in the hollow for long spells at a time, we took a good look over it, as far as we could do on foot. We found a rum sort of place at the end of a long gully that went easterly from the main flat. In one way, you'd think the whole valley had been an arm of the sea some time or the other. It was a bit like Sydney harbor in shape, with one principal valley and no end of small cover and gullies running off from it, and winding about in all directions. Even the sandstone walls by which the whole affair, great and small, was hemmed in were just like the cliff about South Head. There were lines, too, on the face of them, Jim and I made out, just like where the waves had washed marks and levels on the sea rock. We didn't trouble ourselves much about that part of it. Whatever might have been there once it grew stunning fine grass now, and there was beautiful clear fresh water in all the creeks that ran through it. Well, we rambled up the long crooked gully that I was talking about till about halfway up. It got that narrow that it seemed stopped by a big rock that had tumbled down from the top and blocked the path. It was pretty well grown over with wild raspberries and climbers. No use going farther, says Jim. There's nothing to see. I don't know that. Been a track here some time. Let's get round and see. Well, when we got round the rock the track was plain enough it had been well worn once though neither foot nor hoof much had been along it for many a year. It takes a good while to wear out a track in a dry country. The gully widened out bit by bit till it last we came to a little round green flat right under the rock walls which rose up a couple of thousand feet above it on two sides. On the flat was an old hut, very old it seemed to be, but not in bad trim for all that. The roof was of shingles, split, thick and wedge shaped, the walls of heavy iron bark slabs, and there was a stone chimney. Outside had been a garden a few rose trees were standing yet, ragged and stunted. The wallabies had trimmed them pretty well but we knew what they were. Been a corn patch too. The marks where it had been holed up were there, same as they used to do in old times when there were more hose than plows and more convicts than horses and working bullocks in the country. Well, this is a rum start, says Jim, as we sat down on a log outside that looked as if it had been used for a seat before. Who the deuce ever built this gunion lived in it by himself for years and years. You can see it was no two or three months time he'd done here. There's the spring coming out of the rock he dipped his water from. The tracks are regular worn smooth over the stones leading to it. There was a fence around this garden, some of the rails lying there rotten enough but it takes time for sound hard wood to rot. He'd a stool and a table too. Not bad when's either, this Robinson Crusoe Cove. No end of Manavillans either. I wonder whether he came here before them first. Government men chaps we heard of. Likely he did and died here too. He might have chummed in with him, of course, or he might not. Perhaps Starlight knows something about a more waragal. We'll ask him. We fosked some about for a while to see if the man who lived so long by himself in this lonely place had left anything behind him to help us make out what sort he was. We didn't find much. There was writing on the walls here and there and things cut on the fireplace posts. Jim couldn't make head or tail of them near me either. The old Cove may have left something worth having behind him, he said, after staring at the cold hearth ever so long. Men like him often leave gold pieces and jewels and things behind them locked up in brass-bound boxes. Least weigh the storybook, say so. I have half a mind to root up the old hearthstone. It's a thundering heavy one, ain't it? I wonder how he got it there all by himself. It is pretty heavy, I said. For all we know he may have had help to bring it in. We've no time now to see into it. We'd better make tracks and see if Starlights made it back. We shall have to shape after a bit, and we may as well see how he stands affected. He'll be back safe enough. There's no pull in being outside now with all the world shivvying after you and only half rations of food and sleep. Jim was right. As we got up to the Cove we saw Starlight talking to the old man and Waragal letting go the horse. They'd taken their time to come in, but Waragal knew some hole or other where they'd hid before, very likely, so they could take it easier than we did the night we left Rocky Creek. Well, boys, says Starlight, coming forward quite heartily. So glad to see you again. Been taking a walk and engaging yourselves this fine weather? Rather nice country residence of ours, isn't it? Wonder how long we shall remain in possession? What a charm there is in home. No place like home is there, Governor. Dad didn't smile. He very seldom did that. But I always thought he never looked so glum at Starlight as he did at most people. The place is well enough, he ground. If we don't smother it all by letting our tracks be followed up. We've been dashed lucky so far, but it'll take us all we know to come in and out, if we've any road work on hand and no one the wiser. It can be managed well enough, says Starlight. Is that dinner ever going to be ready? Jim, make the tea. There's a good fella. I'm absolutely starving. The main thing is never to be seen together except on great occasions. Two men or three at the outside can stick up any coach or travellers that are worthwhile. We can get home one by one without half the risk there would be if we were all together. Hand me the corned beef, if you'll please, Nick. We must hold a council of war by and by. We were smoking our pipes and lying about on the dry floor of the cave, with the sun coming in just enough to make it pleasant when I started the ball. We may as well have it out now, what lay we're going upon, and whether we're all agreed in our minds to turn out and do the thing in the regular good old-fashioned Sidney-side style. It's risky, of course, and we're sure to have a smart brush or two, but I'm not going to be jugged again, not if I know it. And I don't see but what, bush-ranging. Yes, bush-ranging. It's no use saying one thing and meaning another. Ain't as safe a game, let alone the profits of it, as mooching about cattle-duffing and being lagged in the long run all the same. End of CHAPTER XXII RECORDING by Mike Harris CHAPTER XXIII CHAPTER XXII RECORDING by Mike Harris He opens the door and sells the pass on us. You can both do what you like. And here the old man walked a bang away and left us. No use, Dick, says Jim. If he won't, it's no use my giving in. I can't stand being thought of a coward. Besides, if you were nabbed afterwards, people might say it was through me. I'd sooner be killed and buried a dozen times over than that. It's no use talking, it isn't to be. We'd better make up our minds once and for all and then let the matter drop. For old Jim, he'd gone into it innocent from the very first. He was regular led in because he didn't like to desert his own flesh and blood even if it was wrong. Bit by bit he had gone on, not liking or caring for the thing one bit, but following the lead of others, till he reached his present pitch. How many men and women, too, there are in the world who seem born to follow the lead of others for good or evil. They get drawn in somehow and end up by paying the same penalty as those that meant nothing else from the start. The finish of the whole thing was this, that we made up our minds to turn out in the bush-ranging line. It might seem foolish enough to outsiders, but when you come to think of it, we couldn't better ourselves much. We could do no worse than we'd done, nor run any greater risk to speak up. We were long sentence men, as it was, sure of years and years in prison. And besides, we were certain of something extra for breaking Gowl. Jim and Warrigal were wanted and might be arrested by any chance trooper who could recollect their description in the police gazette. Father might be arrested on suspicion and remanded again and again until they could get some evidence against him for lots of things that he'd been in besides the Monberra cattle. When it was all boiled down, it came to this, that we could make more money in one night by sticking up a coach or a bank than in any other way in a year. But when we'd done it, we were no worse off than we were now as far as being outlawed. And there was a chance, not a very grand one, but still a chance, that we might find a way to clear out of New South Wales altogether. So we settled it at that. We had plenty of good horses, what with the young ones coming on that Warrigal could break and what we had already. There was no fear of running short of horse flesh. Firearms we had enough for a dozen men. They were easy enough to come by. We knew that by every mail coach that traveled on the southern or western line there was always a pretty fair sprinkling of notes sent in the letters, besides what the passengers might carry with them, watches, rings, other valuables. It wasn't the habit of people to carry arms, and if they did, there isn't one in ten that uses them. It's all very well to talk over a dinner table, but anyone who's been stuck up himself knows that there's not much chance of doing much in the resisting line. Well, suppose you're in a coach or riding along a road. Well, you're expected and waited for, and the road party knows the very moment you'll turn up. They see you a common. You don't see them till it's too late. There's a log or something across the road, if it's a coach, or else the driver is walking his horses up a steepish hill.  The coachman sees a strange man in front or close alongside him with a revolver pointed straight at him. He naturally don't like to be shot, and he pulls up. There's another man covering the passengers in the body of the coach, and he says, if any man stirs or lifts a finger, he'll give him no second chance. Just behind on the other side, there's another man, perhaps, too. Well, what's anyone if he's ever so game to do? If he tries to draw a weapon or move ever so little, he's wrapped at that second. He can only shoot one man, even if his aim is good, which it's not likely to be. What is more, the other passengers don't thank him, quite the contrary, for drawing the fire on them. I've known men take away a fellow's revolver lest he should get them all in trouble. That was a queer start, wasn't it? Actually preventing a man from resisting? They were quite right, though. He could only have done mischief and made it harder for himself and everyone else. If the passengers were armed and all steady and game to stand to flutter, something might be done, but you don't get a coachload like that very often. So it's found better in a general way to give up what they have quietly and make no fuss about it. I've known cases where a single bush ranger was rushed by a couple of determined men, but that was because the chap was careless and they were very active and smart. He let them stand too near him. They had him simple enough and he was hanged for his carelessness, but when there's three or four men all armed and steady, it's no use trying the rush dodge with them. Of course there were other things to think about. What we were to do with the trinkets and banknotes and things when we got them, how to pass them and so on. There was no great bother about that, besides Jonathan Barnes and chaps of his sort. Dad knew a few fences that had worked for him before. Of course we had to suffer a bit in value. These sort of men make you pay through the nose for everything they do for you. But we could stand that out of our profits and we could stick to whatever was easy to pass on some of the smaller things that were light to carry about. Men that make three or four hundred pounds of a night can afford to pay for accommodation. The big houses and the bush too. Nothing's easier than to stick up one of them. Lots of valuable things besides money often kept there and it's ten to one against anyone being on the lookout when the boys come. A man hears they're in the neighborhood and keeps a watch for a week or two, but he can't be always waiting at home all day long with double-barreled guns and all his young fellows and the overseer that ought to be at their work among their cattle or sheep on the run, idling their time away. No, he soon gets sick of that and either sends his family away to town till the danger's past or he chances it, as people do, about a good many things in the country. Then some fine day about eleven or twelve o'clock or just before tea or before they've gone to bed the dogs bark and three or four chaps seem to have got into the place without anybody noticing them. A master of the house finds all the revolvers looking his way and the thing's done. The house is cleared out of everything valuable though nobody's armed or frightened in a general way that is. A couple of the best horses are taken out of the stable and the next morning there's another flaring article in the local paper. A good many men tried all they knew to be prepared and have a show for it but there was only one that ever managed to come out right. We didn't mean to turn out all in a minute. We'd had a rough time of it lately and we wanted to wait and take it easy in the hollow and close about for a month or so before we began business. Starlight and I wanted to let our beards grow people without any hair on their faces are hardly ever seen in the country now. Except they've been in gaol lately and of course we should have been marked men. We saw no reason why we shouldn't take it easy. Starlight was none too strong though he wouldn't own it. He wouldn't defaint it as he did if he had. He wanted good keep and rest for a month and so did I. Now that it was all over I felt different from what I used to. Only half the man I once was. If we stayed in the hollow for a month the police might think we'd gone straight out of the country and slack off a bit. Anyhow as long as they didn't hit the trail off to the entrance we couldn't be in a safer place and though there didn't seem much to do we thought we'd managed to hang it out somehow. One day we were riding all together in the afternoon when we happened to come near the gully where Jim and I had gone up and seen the hermit's hut as we had christened it. Often we'd talked about it since, wondered about the man who had lived in it and what his life had been. This time we had all the horses in and were doing a bit of colt-breaking. Warrigal and Jim were both on young horses that had only been ridden once before and we'd come out to give them a hand. Do you know anything about that hut in the gully? I asked Starlight. Oh yes, all there is to know about it, and that's not much. Warrigal told me that while the first gang that discovered this desirable country residence were in possession a stranger accidentally found out the way in. At first they were for putting him to death, but on his explaining that he only wanted a solitary home and who should neither trouble nor betray them they agreed to let him stay. He was a big one gentleman, Warrigal said, but he built the hut himself with occasional help from the men. He was liberal with his gold of which he had a small store while it lasted. He lived here many years and was buried under a big peach tree that he planted himself.  There's a good many strange people in the colony, Dick, my boys, and Starlight, and the longer you live the more you'll find of them. Someday when we've got quiet horses you'll come up and have a regular overhauling of the spot. It's yes, since I've been up here. Supposing he turned out some big swell from the old country. Dad says there used to be a few in the old days in the colony. He might have left papers and things behind him that might turn to good account. Whatever he did leave was hidden away. Warrigal says he was a little chap when he died. But he says he remembers the men making a great corroboree over him when he died and they could find nothing. They always thought he had money and he showed them one or two small lumps of gold and what he said was gold dust washed out from the creek bed. As we had no call to work now we went in for a bit of sport every day. Lord how long it seemed since Jim and I had put the guns on our shoulders and walked out in the beautiful fresh part of the morning to have a day's shooting. It made us feel like boys again. When I said so the tears came into Jim's eyes and he turned his head away. Father came one day. He and old crib were a stunning pair for pot shooting and he was a dead game shot, though we could be at him with the rifle and revolver. There was a pretty fair show of game, too. The loan, Malihen, they're mostly called, and Talagala, the brush turkey, were thick enough in some of the scrubby corners. Warrigal used to get the loan eggs, beautiful pink thin-shelled ones they are, first rate to eat, and one of them's a man's breakfast. Then there were pigeons, wild ducks, quail, snipe now and then, besides wallaby and other kangaroos. There was no fear of starving, even if we hadn't a tidy herd of cattle to come upon. The fishing wasn't bad either. The creeks ran towards the northwest watershed and were full of codfish, green, and perch.  They all tasted pretty good, I'll tell you, after a quick broil, let alone the fun of catching them. Warrigal used to make nets out of quorum and bark, and put little weirs across the shallow places, so as we could go in and drive the fish in. Many a fine cod we took that way. He knew all the black's ways, as well as a good many of ours. The worst of him was that, except in hunting, fishing, and riding, he'd picked up the wrong end of the habits of both sides. Father used to set snares for the brush kangaroo and the bandicoots, like he'd been used to do for the hares in the old country. We had always managed to have some kind of game hanging up. It kept us amused, too. But I don't know whatever we should have done that month we stayed there at the first. We were never so long idle again, without the horses. We used to muster them twice a week, run them up into the big receiving yard, and have a regular good look over them till we knew every one of them like a book. Some of them was worth looking at, my word. Do you see that big, upstanding, three-year-old dark-bear filly with a crooked streak down her face, Starlight would say, and no brand but your father's arm? Do you know her name? Well, that's young termicant, a daughter of Mr. Ronsil's racing mare of the same name, but was stolen a week before she was born, and her dam was never seen alive again. Pity to kill a mare like that, wasn't it? Asiah was repeater, the horse that ran the two three-mile heats with Mackweath in grand time, too. Then again, that just not cold with the white legs would be worth five hundred all out if we could sell him with his right name and breeding, instead of having to do without a pedigree. We shall be lucky if we get a hundred clear for him. The black filly with the star, yes, she's still a bread, too, and couldn't have been bought for money. Only a month old and unbranded, of course, when your father and Warrigal managed to bone the old mare. Mr. Gibson offered fifty pounds reward or a hundred pounds on conviction, wasn't he wild. That big bear horse, Warrior, was in training for a steeple-chase when I took him out of Mr. King's stable. I rode him one hundred and twenty miles before twelve of the next day. Those two browns are Mr. White's famous buggy horses. He thought no man could get the better of him. But your old father was too clever. I believe he could shake the devil's own fore in hand, cold black with mains and tails touching the ground, and eyes of fire, some German fellows, as they are. And the Prince of Darkness never be the wiser. The pull of it is that, once they're in here, they never heard of again till it's time to shift them to another colony, or clear them out and let the buyer take his chance. You have some plums here, I said. Even the cattle look pretty well bred. Always go for pedigree stock. Fifteenth Duke not withstanding. They take no more keeping than rough ones, and they're always saleable. That red short-horn heifer belongs to the butterfly red rose tribe.  We suckled her on an old brindle cow. She doesn't look the worse for it. Isn't she a beauty? Not to go in for an annual sale here. How do you think it would pay? All this was pleasant enough, but it couldn't last forever. After the first week's rest, which was real pleasure and enjoyable, we began to find the life too dull and dozy.  Play as the bear with them. I've always found they get thinking and thinking till they get a low fit like, and then, if there's any grog handy, they try to screw themselves up with that. It gives them a lift for a time, but afterwards they have to pay for it over and over again. That's where the drinking habit comes in. They can't help it. They must drink. If you'll take the trouble to watch men and women, too, that have been in trouble, you'll find that nineteen out of every twenty drink like fishes when they get the chance. It ain't the love of the liquor as teetotalers and those kind of goody people always are ramming down your throat. It's the love of nothing, but it's the fear of their own thoughts, the dreadful misery, the anxiety about what's to come that's always hanging like a black cloud over their heads. That's what they can't stand. And liquor, for a bit, mind you, say, a few hours or so, takes all that kind of feeling clean away. Of course, it returns harder than before, but that says nothing. It can be driven away. All the heavy-heartedness which a man feels but never puts into words flies away with the first or second glass of grog. If a man was suffering pains of any kind or was being stretched on the rack, they never knew what a rack was till I had time for reading and gout, except a horse-rack. Or was being flogged, and a glass of anything he could swallow wouldn't make him think he was on a feather bed enjoying a pleasant dose. Wouldn't he swig it off, do you think?  I, who have often stood for hour after hour, won't he drink then? And why shouldn't he? We began to find that towards the end of the day we all of us found the way to Father's brandy-cake, that by nightfall the whole lot of us had quite as much as we could stagger under. I don't say we regularly went in for drinking, but we began to want it by twelve o'clock every day, and to keep things going after that till bedtime. In the morning we felt nervous and miserable. On the whole we weren't very gay till the sun was over the four-yard. Anyhow we made it up to clear out and have the first go in for a touch on the southern line the next week as ever was. Father was as eager for it as anybody. He couldn't content himself with this sort of Robinson Crusoe life any longer, and said he must have a run and a bit of work of some sort or he'd go mad. This was on the Saturday night. Well, on Sunday we sent Waragal out to meet one of our telegraphs at a place about twenty miles off, and to bring us any information he could pick up and a newspaper. He came back about sundown that evening and told us that the police had been all over the country after us, and that government had offered two hundred pounds reward for our apprehension, mine and Starlight's, with fifty pounds each for Waragal and Jim. They had an idea we'd all shipped for America. He sent us a newspaper. There was some news, that is, news worth talking about. Here was what was printed in large letters on the outside. Wonderful discovery of gold at the Turan. We have such pleasure in informing our numerous constituents that gold, similar in character and value to that of San Francisco, has been discovered on the Turan River by those energetic and experienced practical miners, messes har graves and parting. The method of cradling is the same, the appliance is required as simple and inexpensive, and the proportional yield of gold highly reassuring. It is impossible to forecast the results of this most momentous discovery. It will revolutionize the new world. It will liberate the old. It will precipitate Australia into a nation. Meanwhile, numberless inconveniences, even privations, will arise to be endured unflinchingly to be born in silence. But, Courage, England, we have hitherto achieved victory. This news about the gold breaking out in such a place as the Turan made a great difference in our notions. We hardly knew what to think at first. The whole country seemed upside down. Warrigal used to sneak out from time to time and come back open-mouth, bringing us all sorts of news. Everybody, he said, was coming up from Sydney. There would be nobody left there but the Governor.  We found out that it was true after we had made one or two short rides out ourselves. Afterwards the police had a deal too much to do to think of us. We didn't run half the chance of being dropped on to that we used to do. The whole country was full of absconders and deserters, servants, shepherds, shoppers, soldiers, and sailors, all running away from their work and making in a blind sort of way for the diggings like a lot of caterpillars on the march. We had more than half a notion about going there ourselves, but we turned it over in our minds and thought it wouldn't do. We should be sure to be spotted anywhere in New South Wales. All the police stations had our descriptions posted up with a reward and big letters on the door. Even if we were pretty lucky at the start, we should always be expecting them to drop on us. As it was, we should have 20 times the chance among the coaches that were sure to be loaded full up with men that all carry cash, more or less. You couldn't travel then in the country without it. We had twice the pull now because so many strangers that couldn't possibly be known to the police were straggling over all the roads. There was no end of bustle and rush in every line of work and labour. Money was that plentiful that everybody seemed to be full of it. Gold began to be sent down in big lots by the escort, as it was called, sometimes 10,000 ounces at a time. Now that was money, if you like, 40,000 pounds enough to make one's mouth water, to make one think Dad's prophecy about the 10,000 pounds wasn't so far out after all. Just at the start most people had a kind of notion that the gold would only last a short time, and the things would be worse than before. But it lasted a deal longer than any of us expected. It was 1850 that I'm talking about. It's getting on for 1860 now, and there seems more of it now than ever there was. Most of our lives we've been used to the southern road and we kept to it still. It wasn't right in the line of the gold diggings, but it wasn't so far off. It was a queer start when the news got round about to the other colonies, after that to England, and I suppose all the other old world places, but they must have come by shiploads. The road was that full of new chums. We could tell them easy by their dress, their fresh faces, their way of talk, their thick sticks and new guns and pistols. Some of them you'd see dragging a handcart with another chap, and they having all their goods, tools, and clothes on it. Then there'd be a dozen men with a horse and a cart, and all their swags in it.  They told us that there were rows of ships in Sydney Harbor without a soul to take care of them. But the soldiers were running away to the diggings just as much as the sailors. Clergemen and doctors, old hands and new chums, merchants and lawyers. They all seemed as if they couldn't keep away from the diggings that first year for their lives. All stock went up double in treble what they were before. Cattle and sheep we didn't mind about we could do without them now, but the horse market rose wonderfully, and that made a deal of odds to us, you may be sure. It was this way. Every man that had a few pounds wanted a horse to ride or drive. Every miner wanted a wash-dirt cart and a horse to drive. The farmer wanted working horses. There wasn't hay sixty or seventy pounds a ton, and corn what you like to ask for it. Every kind of harness horse was worth forty, fifty, a hundred pounds a piece, only to ask it. Some of them weedy and bad enough heavens knows. So between the horse-trade and the road-trade we could see a fortune sticking out, ready for us to catch hold of whenever we were ready to collar. Recording by Mike Harris. Robbery Under Arms by Rolf Baldrowood Chapter 24 Our first try on in the coach-line was with the gold-burned mail. We knew the road pretty well and picked out a place where they had to go slow and couldn't get off the road on either side, as all those places like that on a coach-road near the coast if you look sharp and lay it out beforehand. This wasn't on the track to the diggings, but we meant to leave that alone till we got our hand in a bit. There was a lot of money flying about the country in a general way, where there was no sign of gold. All the storekeepers began to get up fresh goods and to send money and notes and checks to pay for them. The price of stock kept dealers and fat cattle-buyers moving, who had their pockets full of notes as often as not. Just as you got nearly through Bargo Brush on the old road, there was a stiffish hill that the coach passengers mostly walked up to save the horses. Fenced in, too, with a nearly new three-rail fence, all iron-bark, and not the sort of thing that you could ride or drive over handy. We thought this would be as good a place as we could pick, so we laid out the whole thing as careful as we could beforehand. The three of us started out from the hollow as soon as we could see in the morning, Friday it was. I remember it pretty well. Good reason I had, too. Father and Waragull went up the night before with the horses we were to ride. They camped about twenty miles on the line we were going at a place where there was good feed and water, but well out of the way and on a lonely road. There had been an old sheep station there and a hut, but the old man had been murdered by the hutkeeper for some money he'd saved, and a story got up that it was haunted by his ghost. It was known as the murdering hut, and no shepherd would ever live there after, so it was deserted. We weren't afraid of shepherds alive or dead, so it came in handy for us, as there was water and feed and an old lambing paddock. Besides, the road to it was nearly all a lot of rock and scrub from the hollow, and that made it an unlikely place to be tracked from. Our dodge was to take three quiet horses from the hollow and ride them there, first thing, then pick up our own three, Rainbow and two other out-and-outters, and ride bang across the southern road. When things were over we were to start straight back to the hollow. We reckoned to be safe there before the police had time to know which way we'd made. It all fitted in first rate. We cracked on for the hollow in the morning early, and found dead and Waragull all ready for us. The horses were in great buckle and carried us over to Bargow easy enough before dark. We camped about a mile away from the road, in as thick a place as we could find, where we made ourselves as snug as things would allow. We brought some grub with us and a bottle of grog, half of which we finished before we started out to spend the evening. We hobbled the horses out and let them have an hour's picking. They were likely to want all they could get before they saw the hollow again. It was near twelve o'clock when we mounted. Starlight said, By Jove, boys, it's a pity we didn't belong to a troop of irregular horse, instead of this rotten colonial dick-turpin business, that one can't help being ashamed of. They would have been delighted to have recruited the three of us, as we ride, and our horses are worth the best part of ten thousand rupees. What a tent-peg-out rainbow would have made, hey, old boy, he said, patting the horse's neck. But famed won't have it, and it's no use whining. The coach was to pass half an hour after midnight. An awful long time to wait, it seemed. We finished the bottle of brandy, I know. I thought they'd never come, and all of a sudden we saw the lamp. Up the hill they came, slow enough, about half way up they stopped, and most of the passengers got out and walked up after her. As they came closer to us, we could hear them laughing, and talking, and sky-larking like a lot of boys. They didn't think who was listening. You won't be so jolly in a minute or two, I think, to myself. They were near the top when Starlight sings out, Stand, bail up! And the three of us all massed, showed ourselves. We never saw a man look so scared as the passenger on the box seat, a stout jolly commercial, who'd been giving the coachman Havana cigars, and yarning and nipping with him at every house they passed. Bill Webster, the driver, pulls up all standing when he sees what was in Starlight's hand, and holds the reins so loose for a minute I thought they'd drop out of his hands. I went up to the coach. There was no one inside, only an old woman and a young one. They seemed struck all of a heap and couldn't hardly speak for fright. The best of the joke was that the passengers started running up full split to warm themselves, and came bump against the coach before they found out what was up. One of them had just opened out for a bit of blowing. Billy, old man, he says, I'll report you to the company if you crawl along this way. When he catches sight of me and Starlight, standing still and silent with our revolvers pointing his way. By George I could hardly help laughing. His jaw dropped, and he couldn't get a word out. His throat seemed quite dry. Now, gentlemen, says Starlight, quite cool and cheerful like, you understand Her Majesty's mail is stuck up to use a vulgar expression, and there's no use resisting. I must ask her to stand in a row there by the fence, and hand out all the loose cash, watches or rings you may have about your— Don't move, don't, I say, sir, or I must fire. This was to a fidgety nervous man who couldn't keep quiet. Now, number one, fetch down the mail bags. Number two, close up here. Here Jim walked up, revolver in hand, and Starlight begins at the first man, very stern.  You never saw a man in such a funk. He was a storekeeper, we found afterwards. He nearly dropped on his knees. Then he handed Starlight a bundle of notes of gold watch and took a handsome diamond ring from his finger, this Starlight put into his pocket. He handed the notes and watched Jim, who had a leather bag ready for them. The man sank down on the ground, he had fainted. Then he was left to pick himself up. Number two was told to shell out. They all had something, some had sovereigns, some had notes and small checks, which were as good in a country place. The squatters drew too many to know the numbers of half that are out, so there is no great chance of their being stopped. They were eighteen male passengers besides the chap on the box seat. We made him come down. By the time we got through them all, it was best part of an hour. I pulled the mail bags through the fence and put them under a tree. Then Starlight went to the coach where the two women were. He took off his hat and bowed. Unpleasant necessity, madam. Most painful to my feelings altogether, I assure you. I must really ask you, is the young lady your daughter, madam? Not at all, says the oldest stout middle-aged woman. I never said eyes on her before. Indeed, madam, says Starlight, bowing again. Excuse my curiosity, I am desolated, I assure you, but may I trouble you for your watchers and passes?  I'm Mrs. Buckster of Barbara Wabra. Indeed, I have no words to express my regrets, says Starlight, but my dear lady, hard necessity compels me. Thanks very much, she said to the young girl. She handed over a small old Geneva watch and a little purse. The plumb lady had a gold watch with a chain and purse to match. Is that all, says he, trying to speak stern? It's my very all, says the girl. Five pounds. Mother gave me her watch, and I shall have no money to take me to Boning, where I am going to a situation. Her lips shook and trembled, and the tears came into her eyes. Starlight carefully handed Mrs. Buckster's watch and purse to Jim. I saw him turn around and open the other purse, and he put something in, if I didn't mistake. Then he looked in again. I'm afraid I'm a rather impertinent, says he. But your face, Miss Elmsdale, thanks, reminds me some of one in another world, the one I once lived in. Allow me to enjoy the souvenir and to return your effects. No thanks. That smile, this ample payment. Ladies, I wish you a pleasant journey. He bowed. Mrs. Buckster did not smile, but looked cross enough at the young lady, who poor things seemed pretty full up and inclined to cry at the surprise. Now then, all aboard, sings out Starlight. Get him, gentlemen. Our business matters are concluded for the night. Better luck next time. William, you had better drive on, send back from the next stage, and you will find the mail-bags under that tree. They shall not be injured more than could be helped. Good night. The driver gathered up his reins and shouted to his team that was pretty fresh after their spell, and went off like a shot. We sat down by the roadside with one of the coach lamps that we had boned, and went through all the letters, putting them back after we'd opened them and popping all notes, checks, and bills into Jim's leather sack. We did not waste more time over our letter sorting than we could help you bet, but we were pretty well paid for it, better than the post office clerks are by all accounts. We left all the mail-bags and a heap under the tree, as Starlight had told the driver, and then, mounting our horses rode as hard as we could lick to where Dad and Warrigal were camped. When we overhauled the leather sack into which Jim had stowed all the notes and checks, we found that we'd done better than we expected, though we could see from the first it wasn't going to be a bad night's work. We had three hundred and seventy pounds in notes and gold, a bigish bag of silver, a lot of checks, some of which would be sure to be paid. Seven gold watches and a lot of silver went some pretty good. Mrs. Buxter's watch was a real beauty with a stunning chain. Starlight said he should like to keep it himself, and then I knew Bella Barnes was in for a present. Starlight was one of those chaps that never forgot any kind of promise he'd once made. Once he said a thing it would be done as sure as death if he was alive to do it, and many a time I've known him to take the greatest lot of trouble, no matter how pushed he might be, to carry out something which another man would have never troubled his head about. We got safe to the murdering hut, and a precious hard ride it was, and tried our horses well, for mind you, they'd been under-settled best part of twenty-four hours when we got back, and had done a good deal over a hundred miles. We made a short halt while the tea was boiling, and we all separated for fear a black tracker might have been loosed on our trail, and knowing well what bloodhounds they are sometimes. Warrigal and Starlight went off together as usual. They were pretty safe to be out of harm's way. Father made off on a line of his own. We took the two horses we'd written out of the hollow and made for that place the shortest way we knew. We could afford to hit out. Horse-flesh was cheap to us, but not to go slow. Time was more than money to us now. It was blood, the next thing to it. I'll go anywhere you like, says Jim, stretching himself. It makes no odds to me now where we go. What do you think of it, Dad? I think you've no call to leave here for another month anyhow.  You may as well go there as anywhere else. If you must go, you'd better take some of these young horses with you and sell them while prices keep up. Capital I does, says Starlight. I was wondering how we'd get those curls off. You've got the best head amongst us, Governor. We'll start out today and muster the horses, and we can take Warrigal with us as far as Jonathan Barns's place. We didn't lose time once we'd made up our minds to anything, so that night all the horses were in and drafted, ready, twenty-five, upstanding, colds, well-bred, and in good condition. We expected they'd fetch a lot of money. They were all quiet, too, and well-broken in by Warrigal, who used to get so much ahead extra for this sort of work and liked it. He could do more with a horse than any man I ever saw. They never seemed to play up with him as young horses do with other people. Jim and I could ride him easy enough when they were tackled, but for handling and catching and getting around them we couldn't hold a candle to Warrigal. The next thing was to settle how to work it when we got to the diggings. We knew the auctioneers there, and everywhere else would sell a lot of likely stock and ask no questions, but there had been such a lot of horse-stealing since the diggings broke out that a law had been passed on purpose to check it. In this way, if any auctioneers sold a stolen horse, and the owner claimed it before six months, the auctioneer was held liable. He had to return the horse and stand the loss. But they found a way to make themselves right. Men generally do have a loss over sharp. They get rounded somehow or another. So the auctioneers made it up among themselves to charge ten percent on the price of all horses that they sold, and make the buyer pay it. For every ten horses they sold they could afford to return one. The proof of an animal being stolen didn't turn up above once in fifty or hundred times, so they could well afford the expense when it did. It wasn't an easy thing to drive horses out of the hollow, especially those that had bred or reared there, but they were up to all that kind of thing, dead in Starlight. First there was a yard at the lower end of the gully that led up where we'd first seen Starlight come down, and a line of fence across the mountain walls on both sides, so that stock once in there couldn't turn back. Then they picked out a couple of three old mayors that had been years and years in the hollow, and be used to be taken up this track and knew their way back again. One they led up. Dad went first with her, and another followed. Then the Colts took the track after them as stock will. In half an hour we had them all up at the top on the table land and ready to be driven anywhere. The first day we meant to get most of the way to Jonathan Barnes' place and to stop there and have a bit of a spell the second. We should want to spell the horses and make them up a bit, as it was a longish drive over a rough country to get there. Besides, we wanted all the information we could get about the diggings and other matters, and we knew that Jonathan was just that open-mouthed, lathery-skightened sort of chap that would talk to everybody he saw, and here, mostly all, it was going on. A long, hard day was that first one. The Colts tried to make back every now and then, or something would start them, and they'd make a regular stampede for four or five miles as hard as they could lay leg to ground. It wasn't easy to live with them across broken country. Well, reddens like them as fast as race horses for a short distance, but they were as good behind them, and Warrigal was pretty nearly always near the lead, doubling and twisting and wheeling him the first bit of open ground there was. He was A1 through timber, and no mistake. We got to a place Father knew whether it was a yard, a little before dark, but we took care to watch them all night for fear of accidents. It wouldn't do to let them out of our sight about there. We should never have set eyes on them again, and we knew a trick worth two of that. Next day, pretty early, we got to Barnes's, where we thought we should be welcome. It was all right, the old man laughed all over his face when he saw us, and the girls couldn't do enough for us when they heard we'd had scarcely a morsel to eat or drink that day. Why, you're looking first-rate, Captain, says Bella. Dick, I hardly knowed you. Mountain air seems to agree with you. Maddie and I thought you was never going to look in no more, though, thought you'd cleaned for goddess. Didn't we, Mad? Why, Dick, what a grand beard you've grown! I never thought you was so handsome before. I promised you a trifling present when I was here last. Didn't I, Bella? says Starline. There are—and he handed her a small parcel carefully tied up—it was served to remind you of a friend. Oh, what a lovely, splendid duck of a watch, says the girl, tearing open the parcel, and what a love of a chain and lots of charms to wear in all the world! Did you get this? I suppose you didn't buy it in George Street. Ah, it was bought in George Street, says he. And here's the receipt. You needn't be afraid of wearing it to church or anywhere else. Here's Mr. Flavel's name all straight and square. It's quite new, as you can see him. Jim and I stared. Dad was outside, seeing the horses fed with warrigal. We made sure at first it was Mrs. Buxtor's watch and chain. But he knew better than to give the girl anything that she could be brought into trouble for wearing, if it was identified on her. So he'd sent the cash down to Sydney, and got the watch sent up to him by one of father's pals. It was as right as the bank, and nobody could touch it or her either. That was Starline all over. He never seemed to care much for himself. As to anything he told a woman, she'd no call to trouble herself about whether it would be done or not. It'll be my turn next, says Maddie. I can't afford to wait till the captain leaves me that beauty horse of his. It's too long. I might be married before that, and my old man cut up rough. Jim Marston, what are you going to give me? I haven't got any earrings worth looking at, except these gold hoops that everybody knows. All right, says Jim. I'll give you and bell a pair each, if you're good girls, when we sell the horses, unless we're nailed at the tour on. What sort of a shop is it? Are they getting much gold? Digging it out like potatoes, says Bella. So a young chap told us that came by this way last week.  Madden and I nearly choked ourselves, laughing. We made him tell it over twice. He said the friend of his was in it, and the coach, that is. And we could have told him friends of ours was in it, too, couldn't we? And what did he think of it all? Oh, he was a new chum, hadn't been a year out, not a bad cut of a young filler. He was awful shook on Mad, but she couldn't look at him. He said if it was in England, then the whole countryside would rise up and hunt such scoundrels down like mad dogs. But in a colony like this people didn't seem to know right from wrong. Ah, did he indeed, says Starlight. Ingenuous youth. When he lives a little longer he'll learn that people in England and indeed everywhere else are very much like they are here. They'll wink at a little robbering, or take a hand of themselves if it's made there while. Oh, and what became of your English friend? Oh, he said he was going on to Port Phillip. There's a big digging that broke out there, too, he says, and he has some friends there, and he makes you like that side better. I think we'd better cut the Sydney side, too, says Starlight. What do you say, Maddie? We'll be able to mix up with these new chum Englishmen and Americans that are coming here in swarms, and puzzle sergeant Goring and his troops more than ever. Oh, come now, that would be mean, says Maddie. I wouldn't be drove away from my own part of the country if I was a man by anybody. I'd stay and fight it out. Goring was here the other day and tried to pick out something from Father and us about the lot of you. Ha! says Starlight, his face growing dark and different looking about the eyes from what I'd ever seen him. Did he? He'd better beware. He may follow up my trail once too often. And what did you tell him? Oh, we told him a lot of things, says the girl, but I'm afraid that they was none of him true. He didn't get much out of us, nor wouldn't if he was to come back once a week. I expect not, says Jim.  There's no man in the police or out of it that'll take much change out of you. I'm most afraid of your father, though, letting the cat out of the bag. He's such an old duffer to blow. He was nearly telling the sergeant he'd seen a bitter horse lately here than his famous chestnut Marlborough. Only Bella trod on his toe and told him the cows was in the wheat. Of course, Goring would have dropped it was Rainbow or some well-bred horse you chaps have been shaking lately.  And it's a pity, like some other folks, you haven't a better feel for the exercise of your talent. However, that's very often the way in as well, as you'll perhaps find out when you're old and ugly and the knowledge can't do you any good. Tell us all you heard about the coach accident. Well, my word, it was the greatest lark out, says Matty. She'd twice the fun on her the other had, and was that good tempered? Nothing seemed to put her out. Everybody has come here seemed to have nothing else to talk about. Those that was going to the Diggins, too, took it much easier than those that was coming away. Well, how was that? Well, the chaps that came away mostly have some gold. They showed us some pretty fair lumps and nuggets, I can tell you. They seemed awfully gallant about being stuck up and robbed of it, and they'd heard yarns of men being tied to trees in the bush and left there to die. Tell them, for me, my fair Madeleine, that Starlight and Company don't deal with single-diggers. Ours is a wholesale businessmen. Eh, Dick? We leave the retail or robbery to Meno-Villains. We had the horses that quiet by this time that we could drive them the rest of the way to the Toron by ourselves. We didn't want to be too big a mob at Barnes's house. Anyone might come in accidental and it might get spread about. So after supper Warrigal was sent back. We didn't want his help any more, and he might draw attention. The way we were to take in the horses and sell them was all put up. Jim and I were to drive them the rest of the way across the ranges to the Toron. Barnes was to put us up on a track he knew that would take us in all right, and yet keep away from the regular highway. Starlight was to stay another day at Barnes's, keeping very quiet, and making believe if anyone came to be a gentleman from Port Phillip that wasn't very well. He'd come in and see the horses sold, but gammon to be a stranger, and never set eyes on us before. My words at Barnes, who just came in at the time, you've made talk enough for all the countryside with that mail-coach racket of yours. Every man, woman, and child that looks in here is sure to say, did you hear about the gulborne mail being stuck up? Well, I did hear something, I says, and out it all comes. They wonder first whether the bush-rangers will be caught, where they've gone to that the police can't get them, how it was that one of them was so kind of the young lady as to give her a new watch-back, and whether Captain Starlight was as handsome as people say, and if Mrs. Buxtor will ever get her watch-back with the big reward the government offered.  I'd like to have been there and see how Bill Webster looked, says Matty. He was here one day since and kept gassing about it all, as if he wouldn't let none of you do only what he liked. I didn't think he was that game, and I told him so. He said I'd better take a seat some day and see how I liked it. I asked him, wasn't they all very good-looking chaps?  I'll give him a hammering for that yet, grumbles old Jim. My word! He was that shaky and blue-looking he didn't know whether I was white or black. We had a great spree that night in a quiet way and got all the fun as was to be had under the circumstances. Barnes came out with some pretty good wine, which Starlight shouted for all around. The old woman cooked us a stunning good dinner, which we made the girls sit down to, and some cousins of theirs that lived close by. We were merry enough before that evening was out. Bella Barnes played the piano middling, and Maddie could sing first rate, and all of them could dance. The last thing I recollect was Starlight showing Maddie what he called a minuet step, and Jonathan and the old woman sitting on the sofa as grave as owls. Anyhow, we all enjoyed ourselves. It was a grand change after being so long alone. The girls romped and laughed and pretended to be offended every now and then, but we had a regular good lark of it and didn't feel any of the worse at daylight next morning. Jim and I were away before sunrise, and after we'd once got on the road that Jonathan showed us, we got on well enough. We were dressed just like common bushmen. There were plenty on the road just then bringing cattle and horses to the diggings. It was well known that high prices were gone there and that everybody paid in cash. No credit was given, of course. We had on blue-sert shirts, mulled skin trousers, and roughish leather gaiters that came up to the knee, with ponchos strapped on in front. Inside them was a spare shirt or two. We had oldish felt hats as if we'd come a good way. Our saddles and bridles were rusty looking and worn. The horses were the only things that were a little too good and might bring the police to suspect us. We had to think of a yarn about them. We looked just the same as a hundred other long-legged six-foot natives with our beards and hair pretty wild, neither better nor worse. As soon as Starlight came on to the Turan, he was to rig himself out as a regular swell and gammon he'd just come out from England to look at the gold fields. He could do that part wonderfully well. We would have backed him to take in the devil himself if he saw him, let alone gold fields police, if Sergeant Goring wasn't about. The second day Jim and I were driving quietly and easy on the road, the Colts trotting along as steady as old stock horses, and feeding a bit every now and then. We knew we were getting near the Turan so many tracks came in from all parts, and all went one way. All of a sudden we heard a low rumbling, roaring noise, something like the tide coming in on the seashore. I said, Jim old man, we haven't made any mistake. Crossed over the main range and got back to the coast, have we? Not likely, he said, but what the deuce is that, Rao? I can't reckon it up for the life of me. I studied and studied. On it went grinding and rattling like all around pebbles in the world rolling on a beach with a tidy surf on. I tumbled at last. I said to Jim, remember that thing with the two rockers we saw at the Hermits Hut in the Hollow? We couldn't make out what it was, I know now. It was a gold cradle, and there's hundreds and thousands rocking there at the Turan. That's what's the matter. Jim said, we're going to see some life it strikes me. We'll know it all directly, but the first thing we've got to do is to shut these young hands up safe in the sail yard. Then we can knock around this town in comfort. We went outside of a rocky point, and sure enough, here was the first Australian gold diggings in full blast. What a sight it was, to be sure. Jim and I sat on our saddles while the horses went to work on the green grass or the flap, and stared as if we'd seen a bit of another world. So it was another world to us, straight away from the sad voice solitudes of the bush. Barring Sydney or Melbourne, we'd never seen so many men in a crowd before, and how different they looked from the crawling people of a town. A green banked rapid river ran before us, through a deep narrow valley. The bright green flats looked so strange with the yellow water rippling and rushing between them. Upon that small flat and by the bank and in the river itself, nearly twenty thousand men were at work, harder and more silently than any crowd we'd ever seen before. Most of them were digging, winding up green-eyed buckets filled with gravel from shafts, which were sunk so thickly all over the place that you could not pass between without jostling someone. Others were driving carts heavily laden with the same stuff towards the river, in which hundreds of men were standing up to their wastes washing the gold out of tin pans, iron buckets, and every kind of vessel or utensil. By far the greater number of miners used things like childs, cradles, rocking them to and fro while a constant stream of yellow water passed through. Very little talk went on, every man looked feverishly anxious to get the greatest quantity of work done by sundown. Foot police and mounted troopers passed through the crowd every now and then, but there was apparently no use or no need for them. That time was to come. Now and then someone would come walking up carrying an absac, not a swag, and showing by his round rosy face that he hadn't seen a summer sun in Australia. We saw a trooper riding toward us and, knowing it was best to take the bull by the horns I pushed over to him, and asked if he could direct us to where Mr. Stevenson's the auctioneer's yard was. Whose horses it is, he said, looking at the brand. BM, isn't it? Bernard Muldoon, lower McCarrie, I answered. There's a friend of his and you chum in charge. He'll be here to-morrow. Go on down Main Street. The first street in the Diggings is always called Main Street. Just as you're going, he said carelessly, giving us all a parting look-through. And take the first lane to the right. It takes you to the yard. It's sale day tomorrow, you're in luck. It was rather sharp work getting the colts through men, women, and children carts, cradle shafts, and tin dishes, but they were at trifle tired and tender-footed, so in less than twenty minutes they were all inside of a high yard where they could scarcely see over the cap, with a row of loose boxes and stalls behind. We put them into Joe Stevenson's hands to sell, that was what everyone called the auctioneer, and walked down the long street. My word, we were stunned and no mistake about it. There was nothing to see but a rocky river and a flat, deep down between hills like we'd seen scores and scores of times, all our lives and thought nothing of, and here they were digging gold out of it in all directions, just like potatoes, as Matty Barn said. Some of the lumps we saw, nuggets they called them, was near as big as new potatoes, without a word of a lie in it. I couldn't hardly believe it, but I saw them passing the little wash-leather bags of gold dust and lumps of dirty yellow gravel but heavier, from one to the other just as if they were nothing. Nearly four pounds an ounce they said it was all worth or a trifle under. It licked me to think it had been hid all the time, and not even the blacks found it out. I believe our blacks are the stupidest, laziest beggars in the whole world. That old man who lived and died in the hollow, though he must have known about it, and the queer-looking thing with the rockers we saw near as hot, that was the first cradle ever was made in Australia. The big man of the Goldfield seemed to be the commissioner. We saw him come riding down the street with a couple of troopers after his heels, looking as if all the place and the gold, too, belonged to him. He had to settle all the rouse and dispute that came up over the gold, and the boundaries of the claims, as they called the twenty-foot paddocks they all washed in, and a nice time he must have had of it. However, he was pretty smart and quick about it. The diggers used to crowd round and kick up a bit of a rouse sometimes when two lots of men were fighting for the same claim and gold coming up close by. But what he said was law and no mistake. When he gave it out, that they had to take it and be content. Then he used to ride away and not trouble his head any more about it. And after a bit of barney, it all seemed to come right. Men like to be talked to straight and no shilly shally. What I didn't like so much was the hunting about of the poor devils that had not got what they called a license, the printed thing giving them leave for the dig gold on the crown lands. This used to cost a pound or thirty shillings a month, I forget rightly which. And, of course, some of the chaps hadn't the money to get it with. Spent what they had been unlucky or run away from somewhere and come up as bear of everything to get it out of the ground. You'd see the troopers asking everyone for their licenses, and those that hadn't them would be marched up to the police camp and chained to a big log. Sometimes for days and days the government hadn't time to get up a lock up with sales and all the rest of it, so they had to do the chain business. Some of these men had seen better days and felt it. The other diggers didn't like it either and growled a good deal among themselves. We could see it would make bad blood some day. But there was such a lot of gold being got just then that people didn't bother their heads about anything more than they could help. Plenty of gold, plenty of money, people bringing up more things every day from the towns for the use of the diggers. You could get pretty near anything you wanted by paying for it. Hard work from daylight to dark with every now and then a big find to sweeten it, when a man could see as much money lying at his foot or in his hand as a year's work, nor five hadn't made for him before. No wonder people were not in a hurry to call out for change in a place like the Teuron in the year 1850. That first night put the stunts on us.  Mobs of men talking, singing, jaffing, dealing, all as jolly as a lot of schoolboys. There was grog, too, going as there is everywhere. No publics were allowed at first, so, of course, it was sold on the slide. It's no use trying to make men do without grog and the means of getting it. It never works. I don't hold with every shanty being licensed, and it's being under a man's nose all day long. But if he has the money to pay for it and wants to have an extra glass of grog or two with his friends, or because he has other reasons, he ought to be able to get it without hardships being put in his way. The government was afraid of there being tremendous fights and riots at the diggings because there was all sorts of people there, English and French, Spaniards and Italians, natives and Americans, Greeks and Germans, Swedes and Negroes, every sort and kind of man from every country in the world seemed to come after a bit. But they needn't have been frightened of the diggers. As far as we saw, they were the senspless lot of working men we ever laid eyes on. Not at all inclined to make a row for nothing. Quite the other way. But the shutting off of public houses led to Sly Grog Tentz, where they made the digger pay a pound a bottle for his grog, and didn't keep it very good either. When the police found a Sly Grog Tentz, they made short work of it, I'll say. Jim and I were close by and saw them at the front. Somebody had informed on the man, or they had some other reason.  He went in and found two casks of brandy and one of rum, besides a lot of bottle stuff. They didn't want that for their own use, he believed. First he had the heads knocked into the hog's heads, and then all the bottled wine and spirits were unpacked and stowed away in a cart, while the straw was put back in the tent. Then the men and women were ordered to come outside, and a trooper set fire to the straw. In five minutes the tent and everything in it was a mass of flame. There was a big crowd gathered round outside. They began to groan when the trooper lit the straw, but they did nothing and went quietly home after a bit. We had the horses to see after next day.  Jim and I could hardly keep from bursting out laughing. He brought up a quiet, covey sort of stock horse from the hollow, plain enough but a wonder to go, particularly over broken country. Of course it didn't do to bring rainbow out for such work as this. For a wonder he had a short tail. Well, he'd squared this cob's tail and hogged his mane so that he looked like another animal. He was pretty fat, too. He was dressed up to the nines himself, and if we didn't expect him we wouldn't have known him from a crow. First of all he had a thick, rough suit of tweed clothing on all the same color, with a round felt hat. He had a brand new saddle and bridle that hadn't got yellow rubbed off them yet. He had an English hunting whip in his hand, and brown dogskin gloves. He had tan leather gaiters that buttoned up to his knees. He shaved his beard all but his moustache and a pair of short whiskers. He had an eyeglass in his eye which he let drop every now and then, putting it up when he wanted to look at anybody. When he rode up to the yard, everybody stared at him, and one or two of the diggers laughed and began to call out, Joe. Jim and I thought how soul some of them would have been if he turned on them and they'd found out who it was. However, he pushed up to the auctioneer. Without looking out right or left, he'd rolled, May I ask if you are Mr. Joseph Stephenson? Yeah, I'm Joe Stephenson, says the auctioneer. What can I do for you? Oh, here is a letter from a friend of Mr. Bernard Muldoon, fellow of Macory, requesting you to sell these horses for him, and hand over the post-seeds to Mr. Augustus Guambea. Stephenson read the letter and nodded his head and said, All right, I'll attend to it, and went on with the sale. It didn't take long to sell our coats. There were some draft stock to come afterwards, and Joe had a day's work before him. But ours sold well. There had not been anything like this for size, quality, and condition. The commissioner even sent down and bought one. The inspector of police was there and bought one recommended by Starlight. They fetched high prices from fifty to eighty-five guineas, and they came to a fair-ish figure the lot. When the last horse was sold, Starlight said, I feel personally obliged to Mr. August Stephenson, for the highly satisfactory manner in which you have conducted the sale, and I shall inform my friend Mr. Maldoon of the way you have sold his stock. Much obliged, sir, says Joe, touching his hat. Come inside, and I'll give you the cheque. Oh, quite unnecessarily now, says Starlight. But as I'm acting for a friend, it might be as well. We saw him pocket the cheque and ride slowly over the bank, which was half-tent, half bark-hut. We didn't think it safe to stay on the tour on any an hour longer than we were forced to do. We'd seen the diggings and got a good notion of what the whole thing was like. Sold the horses and got the money. That was the principal thing. Nothing for it now but to get back to the hollow. Something would be sure to be said about the horses being sold, and when it came out that they were not Maldoons, it'd be a great flare-up. Still, they could not prove that the horses were stolen. There wasn't a wrong brand or a fake one in the lot, and no one could swear to a single head of them, though the whole lot were come by on the cross, and father could have told who owned every one among them. That was curious, wasn't it? We put in a night at Jonathan Barnes' on our way back. Maddie got the earrings and bella the making of a new writing habit which she had been wanting and talking about for a good while. Starlight dressed up and did the new chum young Englishman eyeglass and all over again, and repeated the conversation he'd had with the Inspector of Police about his friend Mr. Maldoon's illness and the colts he recommended. It was grand, and the girls laughed till they cried again. Well, those were merry days. We did have a bit of fun sometimes, and if the devil was dogging us, he kept a good way out of sight. It's his way at the start when fellas take the downward track. We got back safe enough, and father opened his eyes when he saw the roll of note Starlight counted over as the price of the colts. Ha! Horse-breeding's our best games, says the old man. If they're going to pay such prices as this, I have half a mind to start and take a lot over to Port Phillip.