 49 He shook hands with me and Dad, threw his leg over Rainbow, took locket's bridle as if he was going for an easy day's ride, and cantered off. Warn Gale nodded to both of us, then brought his pack horse up level, and followed up. There goes the captain says, Father. It's hard to say if we'll ever see him again. I shan't anyhow, nor you either, maybe. Somehow I've had a notion coming over me this good while, as my time ain't going to be long. I don't make no odds, neither. Life ain't no great chop to a man like me, not when he gets the wrong side of sixty, anyhow. Mine ain't been such a bad innings. And I don't owe much to any man. I mean, as I've mostly been square with them, that's done me a bad turn. No man can say that Ben Marston was ever backward in that way, and never will be. That's more. No. Them has trod on me, felt my teeth some day or other. Owl man. Crib growled. He understood things regular like a Christian that old dog did. And now you're a-going off, and Jim's gone. Seems only the other day, as you and he, was little toddlin' chaps, running to meet me when I come home from work, clearing that fussed paddock and telling me Mammy had the tea ready. Perhaps I'd a better struck to grubbin' and clearin' after all. It looked slow work, but it paid better than this here in the long run. Father turns away from me, then, and walks back a step or two, then he faces me. Dash it, boy. What are you waiting for? Shake hands and tell Jim the old man hadn't forgot him yet. It was many a day since I felt Father's hand in kindness. He didn't do them, sort of things. I held out mine and his fingers closed on it in one minute, like a vice. Blessed if I didn't expect to feel the bones great again one another. He was that strong, he hardly knew his own strength, I believe. Then he sits down on the log by the fire. He took out a spipe, but somehow it wouldn't light. Goodbye, crib, says I. The old dog looked at me for a bit, wagged his tail, and then went and sat between Dad's knees. I took my horse and rode away, slowish. I felt all dead and alive, like when I got near the turn in the track. I looked back and seen the dog and him just the same. I started both horses then. I never set my eyes on him again, poor old Dad. I wasn't very gay for a bit, but I had a good horse under me, another alongside. A smartish lot of cash and notes in gold. Some bank deposits too. And all the world before me. My dart now was to make my way to Willow Rune and look sharp about it. My chance of getting through was none too good. But I settled to ride a deal at night and camp by day. I began to pick up my spirits after I got on the road, and let up the mountain, and to look ahead to the time when I might call myself my own man again. Next day after that I was at Willow Rune. I could have got there overnight, but it looked better to camp near the place and come next morning. There I was all right. The overseer was a reasonable sort of man, and I found old George had been as good as his word, and left word if a couple of men like me and Starlight came up, we were to be put on with the next mob of cattle that were going to Queensland. He did a store cattle trade with the far out squatters that were stocking up new country in Queensland, and it paid him very well, as nearly everything did that he touched. We were to find our own horses and be paid so much a week, three pounds I think, and so on. As luck would have it, there was a bigish mob to start in a week, and road hands being scarce in that part, the overseer was disappointed that my mate, as he called him, hadn't come on, but I said he'd gone another track. Well, he'd hardly get such wages at any other job, says he, and if I was Mr. Storefield I wouldn't hire him again, not if he wanted a billet ever so bad. I don't suppose he will, says I, and serves him quite right too. I put my horse in the paddock. There was wild oats and crow's foot knee-high in it, and helped the overseer to muster and draft. He gave me a fresh horse, of course. When he saw how handy I was in the yard, he got quite shook on me, and says he, by George, you're just the chap the boss wants to send out to some new country he's going to take up in Queensland. What's your name? Now I think of it he didn't tell me. William Turner, says I. Very well, William, says he. You're a dashed good man, I can see, and I wish I could pick up a few more like you. Blessed if I ever saw such a lot of duffers in my life as there are on this side. I've hardly seen a man come by that's worth his grub. You couldn't stop till the next mob starts, I suppose. I'd make it worth your while. I couldn't well this time, says I. My mates got a friend out north, just from home, and were tied to time to meet him. But if I come back this way, I'll put in a year with you. Well, an offer is an offer, says he. I can't say more, but I think you'll do better by stopping on here. I got away with the cattle all right, and the drover in charge was told to do all he could for me. The overseer said I was as good as two men, and it was Bill here and William there all the time till we were off. I wasn't sorry to be clear away, for of course any day a trooper might have ridden up and asked questions about the horses. That were a little too good for a working drover. Besides, I had a look at the papers, and I saw that Starlight had been as good as his word in the matter of the advertisement. Sure enough, the Turin Star, and a lot of other papers had, on the same day, received the same advertisement, with a pound note enclosed, and instructions to insert it four times. Notice. To all whom it may concern. The Messers, Marston Brothers and Company, about to leave the district, request that all accounts against them may be sent to Police Camp Turin, addressed to the care of Sir Ferdinand Moringer, whose receipt will be sufficient discharged, for the firm Starlight. I couldn't have believed it at first that he had been so mad, but after a bit I saw that, like a lot of his reckless do-ings, it wasn't so far out after all. All the papers had taken it up as usual, and though some of them were pretty wild at the insult offered to the government, and so on, I could see that most of them come to think it was a blind of some sort, meant to cover a regular big touch that we were going in for, close by home, and wanting to throw the police off the scent once more. If we really wanted to make tracks, they said, this would be the last thing we'd think of doing. Bit by bit it was put about, as there should be a carefully laid plot to stick up all the banks in Turin on the same day, and make a sweep of all the gold and cash. I laughed when I saw this, because I knew that it was agreed upon between Eileen and Gracie that, about the time we were fairly started, whichever one of them saw Sir Ferdinand first, should allow it to be fished out of her, as a great secret, that we were working up to some tremendous big affair of this sort, and which was to put the crown on all our other doings. To make dead sure, we had sent word to Billy the Boy, and some money too, to raise a sham kind of stick-up racket on the other side of the Turin, towards Bathurst Way. He was to frighten a few small people that would be safe to talk about it, and make out that all the Bush Rangers in the country were camped about there. This was the sort of work that the young villain regularly went in for, and took a pleasure in. And by the way the papers put it in, he had managed to frighten a lot of travellers and roadside publicans out of their senses most. As luck would have it, Wall and Hubert and Moran had been working up towards Mudgee lately, and stuck up the mail, and as Master Billy thought a great lark to write about with them with a black mask on, people began to think the gangs had joined again, and that some big thing, they didn't know what, was really on the cards. So a lot of police were telegraphed for, and the Bathurst Superintendent came down, all in a hurry, to the Turin, and in the papers nothing went down but telegrams and yarns about Bush Rangers. They didn't know what the country was coming to. All the sober people, wishing they'd never got an ounce of gold in Australia, and every little storekeeper along the line that had one hundred pounds in his cash box, hiding it every night, and afraid of seeing us ride up every time the dogs barked. All the time we were heading for Cunamula, and leaving New South Wales behind us hand over hand. The cattle, of course, couldn't travel very fast. Ten or twelve miles a day was enough for them. I could have drowned myself in the creeks as we went, crawling along sometimes, and I that impatient to get forward. Eighty miles it was, from Cunamula to the Queensland border. Once we were over that, we'd have to be arrested on warrant, and there were lots of chaps, like us, that were wanted on the far out North Stations. Once we sighed at the waters of war ago, we should feel ourselves more than half free. Then there was Jim, poor old Jim. He wrote to say he was just starting for Melbourne, and very queer he felt about leaving his wife and boy. Such a fine little chap as he'd grown too. He had just got his head down, he said, and taken to the pulling, he meant working, like our old, near side polar. And he was as happy as a king, going home the genie at night, and having his three pounds every Saturday. Now he was going away ever so far by land and sea, and God knows when he might see either of them again. If it wasn't for fear, he had of being pitched upon by the police any day, and the long sentence he was sure to get, he'd stay where he was. He wasn't sure whether he wouldn't do so now. After that Eileen had a letter, a short one, from Genie. Jim had gone. She had persuaded him for the sake of the boy, though both their hearts were nearly broken. She didn't know whether she'd done right. Perhaps she might never see him again. The poor fellow had forfeited his coach fair once, and had come back to stay another day with her. When he did go, he looked at the picture of misery, and something told her it was their last parting. While we struck the river about ten miles this side of Cunamula, where there was a roadside inn, a small, miserable kind of place, just one of those half shanties, half public houses, fit for nothing but to trap bushmen, and where the bad grog kills more men in a year than a middling outbreak of fever. Somewhere about here I expected to hear of the other two. We'd settled to meet a few miles one side or the other of the township. It didn't much matter which. So I began to look about in case I might get word of either of them, even if they didn't turn up to the time. Somewhere about dinnertime, twelve o'clock, we got the cattle onto the river and let them spread over the flat. Then the man in charge rode up to the inn, the traveller's rest, a pretty long rest for some of them, as a grave here and there with four panels of chicory, two rail-fence around it showed, and shouted nobblers round for us. While we were standing up at the bar, waiting for the cove to serve it out, the flash-looking cart he was, and didn't hurry himself, up rides a tall man to the door, hangs up his horse, and walks in. He had on a regular town rig, watch and chain, leather-velisse round felt-hat, like a chap going to take charge of a store or something. I didn't know him at first, but directly our eyes met and I saw it was old Jim. We didn't talk, no fear, and my boss asked him to join us, like any other stranger. Just then in comes the landlady to sharpen up the man at the bar. Haven't you served those drinks yet, Bob, she sings out? Why, the gentleman called for them half an hour ago. I never saw such a slow-going crawler as you are. You'd never have done for the Turin boys. We all looked at her, not a bad-looking woman she'd once been, though you could see she'd come down in the world, and been knocked about a bit. Surely I knew her voice. I'd seen her before. Why, of course. She was quicker than I was. Well, Dick says she, pouring out all the drinks, taking the note, and rattling down the change on the counter, all in a minute, same as I'd often seen her do before. This is a rough shop to meet old friends in, isn't it? So you didn't know me, eh? We're both changed a bit. You look pretty fresh on it. A woman loses her looks sooner than a man when she goes to the bed, and Jim, too, she goes on, only to fancy, poor old Jim, turning up here, too. One would think you'd put it up to meet at the township on some plant of that sort. It was Kate, sure enough. How in the world did she ever get here? I knew she'd left Turin, and that old Molexon had dropped a lot of his money in a big mining company. He'd helped the float, and that never turned out gold enough to pay for the quick silver in the first crushing. We'd heard afterwards that he'd died, and she'd married again, but I never expected to see her brought down so low as this. Not but what we'd known many a woman that started on the diggins with silks and satins and a big house and plate glass windows, brought down to a cotton gown and a bark shanty before half a dozen years were over. Jim and I both looked clear. The men began to laugh. Anyone could see we were both in a fix. Jim spoke first. Are you sure you're not making a mistake, Missy says he, looking at her very quiet like? Take care of what you say. He'd better have held his tongue. I don't know whether she really intended to give us away. I don't think she did altogether. But, with them kind of women, it's a regular toss-up, whether they'll behave reasonable or not. When once they're started, especially if they think they've not been treated on the square, they can't stop themselves. Take care of what I say, she breaks out, raising her voice to a scream, and looking as if she'd jump over the bar counter and tear the eyes out of me. Why should I take care? It's you, Dick Marston. You double-faced, treacherous dog that you are. That's got a thousand pounds on your head. That has cost a care. And you, Jim Marston, that's in the same reward. And both of you know it. Not that I have anything against you, Jim. You're a man and always was. I'll say that for you. And you're a woman, groans out, poor Jim. That's the reason you can't hold your infernal tongue, I suppose. Kate had let the cat out of the bag now, and no mistake. You should have seen the drover and his men look at us. When they found they had the famous Bush Rangers among them, they'd all heard so much about this year's past. Some looked pretty serious, and some laughed. The drover spoke first. Bush Ranger here, or Bush Ranger there, he says, I'm going to lose a dashed good man among cattle. And if this chattering fool of a woman had held her tongue, the pair of ye might have come on with the cattle till they were delivered. Now I'm a man short, and haven't won as I can trust on a pinch. I don't think any more of you, Miss E., he says, for being so dashed ready to give away your friends. Supposing they had been on the cross. But Kate didn't hear. She had fallen down in kind of a fit, and her husband, coming in to see what the row was about, picked her up and stood looking at us with his mouth open. Look here, my man, says I. Your wife's taken me and this gentleman, pointing the gym, for some people she knew before on the diggings, and seems to have gotten rather excited over it. If it was worth our while to stay here, we'd make her prove it. You'd better get her to lie down, and advise her, when she comes to, to hold her tongue, or you might be made to suffer by it. She's a terror when she's put out, and that's God's truth, says the chap, and starting to drag her over to one of the bits of back bedrooms. It's all right, I daresay. She will keep meddling with what don't concern her. I don't care who you are or what you are. If you'd known her before, I expect you'll think it best to clear out, while she's unsensible like. Here's a shout all around for these men here, says I, throwing a note on the bar. Never mind the change. Goodbye, chaps. This gentleman and I have some business together, and there's no bush-ranging in it. You may take my word. We all left then. The men went back to their cattle. Jim rode quietly along the road to Cunamulla, just like any other traveller. I went down and saddled up my horse. I'd got everything I wanted in my swag, so I left the other horse at Willaroon. Never mind the settlement, says I to the drover. I'll be coming back to the station after I've finished my business in Queensland, and we can make up the account then. The overseer looked rather doubtful. This seems rather mixed, says he. Blessed if I understand it, the woman at the pub seems half off her head to me. I can't think too quiet looking chaps like you can be the Marston's. You've been a thundering good road-hand anyhow, and I wish you luck. He shook hands with me, I rode off, and kept going along the road till I overtook Jim. When I'd gone a mile or two, there was Jim riding steadily along the road, looking very dull and downlike, just the way he used to do when he was studying how to get round a job of work, as he wasn't used to. He brightens up a bit when he sees me, and we both jumped off and had a good shake hands and a yarn. I told him about Mother and Eileen, and how I'd left Dad all by himself. He said Jeannie and the boy were all right, but of course he'd never heard of him since, and couldn't help feeling dumpersome about meeting her again. Particularly now this blessed woman had dropped across us, and wouldn't keep her mouth shut. As sure as we'd had anything to do with her, bad luck followed up, says Jim. I'd rather have faced a trooper than see her face again. She can't do much now, says I. We're across the border. I wonder where Starlight is. Whether he's in the township or not. As soon as we meet him, we can make straight for the ship. He's there now, says Jim. He was at Kate's last night. How do you know that? I heard her mutter something about it, just when she went into that fit, or whatever it was, devilment, I think. I never saw such a woman, and to think she's my Jeannie's sister. Never mind that, Jim. These things can't be helped, but what did she say? Something like this. He thought I didn't know him, passing himself off as a gentleman, warring all two. Kate Morrison's eyes are too sharp for that, as he'll find out. Think she'll give us away again, Jim? God only knows. She mightn't this time, unless she wants to smother you all together, and don't mind who she hurts along with you. There's one good thing in it, says I. There's no police nearer than Triel Gerrat. And it's a long day's ride to them. We made it all right before we left the Turin. All the police in the country is looking for us on the wrong road, and will be for a week or two yet. Then I told him about Eileen, putting Sir Ferdinand on the wrong lay, and he said what a clever girl she was, and had as much pluck and sense as two or three men. The deal more than we've ever showed dicks, as he, and that's not saying much, either. He laughed in his quiet way when he heard about Starlight's advertisement in the Turin Star, and said it was just like him. He's a wonderful clever fellow, the captain. I've often thought, when I've been by myself in Melbourne, sitting quiet, smoking at night, and turning all these things over, that it's a wonder he don't shoot himself when he thinks of what he is, and the man he ought to be. He's had enough to take us safe out of this dashed old Sidney side, says I, and land us in another country, where we'll be free and happy in spite of all that's come and gone. If he does that, we've no call to throw anything up to him. Let him do that, says Jim, and I'll be a servant to the day of my death. But I'm afraid it isn't to be any more than going to heaven right off. It's too good somehow to come true. And yet, what a thing it is to be leading a working honest life, and be afraid of no man. I was very near like that in Melbourne, Dick, he says. You've no notion what a grand thing it was. When I'd done my week's work, and used to walk about with Jeannie and her boy on the Sundays, and passed a time a day with decent square coves that I knew, and never dreamed I was different, then going home peaceful and contented to our little cottage. I tell you, Dick, it was heaven on earth. No wonder it regular broke my heart to leave it. We're close up to the township now, says I. The wire fence and the painted gate ain't more than a couple of miles off, the chap said at the end. I wish there was a firestick in it, and I'd never gone inside a door of it. However, that says nothing. We've got to meet Starlight somehow, and there's no use in riding together. You go in first, and I'll take a wheel outside the house, and meet you in the road a mile or two ahead. Where's your pistol? I must have a look at mine. I had to roll it up in my swag, and at once loading. Mine's a good tool, says Jim, bringing out a splendid-looking revolver. One of those new Dean and Adamses. I can make prime shooting at fifty yards, but I hope the God I shan't want to use it. There's no fear yet a bit, says I, but it's as well to be ready. I'll load before we go any farther. I loaded and put her back in the belt. We were just going to push on when we heard the sound of galloping, and round a patch of scrub comes a horseman at full speed. When he sees us, he cuts off the road and comes towards us. There was only one horse that carried himself like that, even when he was pulling double. We spotted him the same second, rainbow and starlight on him. What in thunder makes him ride like that? When he came closer we saw by his face that something was up. His eyes had the gloomy, dull fire in them that put me in mind of the first time I saw him, when he came back wounded and half dead to the hollow. Don't stop the talk, boys, he sings out without stopping, but ride like the devil, head to the left. That infernal warren gall has laid the police on your track, dick. They were seen at Willa Rune, maybe up at any minute. Where's warren gall now, I said, as we all took our horses by the head, and made for a patch of dark timber we could see far out on the plain. He dropped when I fired at him, said starlight, but whether the poor beggars dead or not, I can't say. It isn't my fault if he betrays any one again. How did it come out? I was tired of waiting at that confounded hotel, not a soul to speak to. I rode back as far as Kate's, just to see if you had passed. She didn't know me a bit. The deuce she didn't, why she broke out on me and Jim, said something about you and warren gall, too. Wonderful creatures, women, says he, thoughtful like, and yet I used to think I understood them. No time to do anything, though. No, the nearest police station's a day off. I'll give a trifle to know who's after us. How did you find out warren gall's doubling on me? Not that it matters. Now, damn him. When I talked about going back he was in a terrible fright, and raised so many objections that I saw he had some reason for it. So I made him confess. How did he do it? After we passed Dandalu, well inside the West Bogan Scrubs, he picked up a black fellow who had once been a tracker, gave him a pound, to let them know at the police camp that you two were making out by Willaroon. I knew he had it in for me, said I, but I depended on his not doing anything for fear of hurting you. So I thought, too, but he expected you'd be trapped at Willaroon before there would be time for you to catch me up. If he hadn't met that Jimmy Wardell, I daresay he wouldn't have thought of it. When he told me I was in such an infernal rage that I fired point blank at him, didn't wait to see whether he was dead or alive, and rode straight back here to warn you. I was just in time, ah, Jim old man. Why, you look so respectable they'd never have known you. Why didn't you stay where you were, James? I wish to God I had, says poor old Jim. It's too late to think of that now. We hadn't over much time for talking, and had to range up close to do it, at all, at the pace we were going. We did our best, and must have ridden many a mile before dark. Then we kept going through the night. Starlight was pilot, and by the compass he carried, we kept going, something in a line with the road. But we missed Warngale in the night work, and more than once I suspected we were going round, and not keeping a straight course. We didn't do badly after all, for we struck the main road at daylight, and made out that we were thirty miles to the other side of Cunamulla, and in the right direction. The worst of it was, like all shortcuts and night riding, we'd taken about twice as much out of our horses as we need have done, if we had been certain of our line. This ought to be the Myrny Bone Creek, says Starlight, by the look of it, when we came to a goodish, broad bit of water, the crossing-places boggy, so they told me at the hotel. We may as well pull up for a spell. We're in Queensland now, that's one comfort. It took us all we knew to get over. It was a regular quicksand. Rainbow never got flustered if he was up to his neck in a bog, but my horse got frightened and plunged, so I had to jump off. Jim's horse was a trifle better, but he hadn't much to spare. We weren't sorry to take the bridles out of their mouths, and let them pick a bit on the flat when we got safe over. We didn't unsaddle our horses, no fear. We never did that, only at night, not always then. We took the bits out of their mouths, and let them pick feed round the bout, with the bridle under their feet, stock horse fashion. They were all used to it, and you'd see them put their foot on a rain, and take it off again, regular, as if they knew all about it. We could run full pelt, and catch them all three in a minute's notice. Old Rainbow would hold up his head when he saw starlight coming, and wait for him to mount if there was a hundred horses galloping past. Lucky for him, he'd done it scores of times. Once on his back there was no fear of any other horse overhauling him, any more than a coolly dog or a flying doe kangaroo. Pretty well settled, it came to be amongst us that we should be well into Queensland, before the police were handy. Starlight and Jim were having a pitch about the best way to get aboard, one of these purling craft, and how jolly it would be. The captains didn't care two straws, what sort of passengers they took aboard, so long as they had the cash, and were willing to give a hand when they were wanted. We were just walking toward the horses to make a fresh start, when starlight puts up his hand. We all listened, there was no mistaking the sound we heard, horses at speed, and mounted men at that. We were in a sort of angle, we couldn't make back over the infernal boggy creek we'd just passed, and they seemed to be coming on two sides at once. By their honest said starlight, and he cocks his rifle, and walks over quite cool to the old horse. Our chance, boys, is to exchange shots and ride for it. Keep cool, don't waste your fire, and if we can drop a couple of them, we may slip them yet. We hadn't barely time to get to our horses, when out of the timber they came, in two lots, three on each side, police sure enough, and meeting us. That shook us a bit, how the devil did they get ahead of us, after the pace we'd ridden, the last 24 hours, too. When they came close we could see how it was. Sir Ferdinand and three troopers on one side, Inspector Goring, with two more on the left, while outside, not far from the lead, rode Sir Watkins, the Braidwood Black Tracker, the best hand at that work in the three colonies, if you could keep him sober. Now we could see why they took us in front. He had kept out wide, when he saw the tracks were getting hot, so as to come in on the road ahead of us, and meet us full in the teeth. He had hit it off well this time, blast him. We couldn't make back on account of the creek, and we had double our number to fight, and good men, too, before we could break through, if we could do that. Our time was come if we had the devil's own luck, but we had come out of as tight a place before, and might do it again. When they were within fifty yards Sir Ferdinand calls out, Surrender, it's no use, men, it says he. I don't want to shoot you down, but you must see you're outnumbered. There's no disgrace in yielding now. Come on, says Starlight, don't waste your breath. There's no man here who will be taken alive. With that, goring, let's drive, and send a bullet that close by my head that I put up my hand to feel the place. All the rest bangs away. Black Tracker and all. I didn't see Sir Ferdinand's pistol smoke. He and Starlight seemed to wait. Then Jim and I fires Steady. One trooper drops badly hit. My man's horse sound like a log, and penned his rider under him, which was pretty nigh as good. Steady does it, says Starlight, and he makes a snap shot at the Tracker, and breaks his right arm. Three men spoiled Sissy. One more to the good, and we may charge. Just as he said this, the trooper that was underneath the dead horse crawls from under him, the offside, and rests his rifles on his wither. Starlight had just mounted when every rifle and pistol in the two parties was fired at one volley. We had drawn closer to one another, and no one seemed to think of cover. Rainbow rears up, giving one spring, and falls backward with a crash. I thought Starlight was crushed underneath him, shot through the neck and flank as he was. But he saved himself somehow, and stood with his hand on Rainbow's bane. When the old horse rose again all right, head and tail well up, and Steady as a rock. The blood was pouring out of his neck, but he didn't seem to care too straws about it. You could see his nostrils spread out, and his eye looking twice as big and fiery. Starlight rests his rifle a minute on the old horse's shoulder, and the man that had fired the shot fell over with a kick. Something hits me in the ribs like a stone, and another on the right arm, which drops down, just as I was aiming at a young fellow with light hair that had ridden pretty close up, under a mile tree. Jim and Sir Ferdman let drive straight at one another the same minute. They both meant it this time. Sir Ferdman's hat turned part round on his head, but poor old Jim drops forward on his face and tears up the grass with his hands. I knew what that sign meant. Goring rides straight at Starlight and calls on him to surrender. He had his rifle on his hip, but he never moved. There he stood, with his hand on the bane of his old horse. Keep back if you're wise, Goring says he, as quiet and steady as if he had been cattle-drafting. I don't want to have your blood on my head, but if you must. Goring had taken so many men in his day that he got overconfident like. He thought Starlight would give in at the last moment or miss him in the rush. My right arm was broken, and now that Jim was down we might both be took, which would be a great crow for the police. Anyhow, he was a man that didn't know what fear was, and he chanced it. Two of the troopers fired point-blank at Starlight as Goring rode at him, and both shots told. He never moved, but just lifted his rifle as the other came up at a gallop. Goring threw up his arms and rode off his horse, a dying man. Starlight looked at him for a minute. Where quits he says, it's not once but twice, either. You've pulled trigger on me. I knew this day would come. Then he sinks down slowly by the side of the old horse and leans against his foreleg. Rainbow standing quite steady, only tossing his head up and down the old way. I could see, by the stain on Starlight's mouth and the blood on his breast, that he had been shot through the lungs. I was badly hit too, and going in the head, though I didn't feel it so much at the time, I began to hear voices like in a dream. Then my eyes darkened, and I fell like a log. When I came to, all the men was off their horses, some round Goring. Him they lifted up and propped against a tree, but he was stone dead, anyone could see. Sir Ferdinand was on his knees beside Starlight, talking to him, and the others saying a word now and then, quite composed and quiet like. Close thing, Moringer, wasn't it, I heard him say. You were too quick for us, another day, and we'd been out of reach. True enough, horses all dead beat, couldn't raise a remount for lover money. Well, the game's up now, isn't it? I held some good cards, too, but they never told somehow. I'm more sorry for Jim and that poor girl Eileen that I am for myself. Don't fret, there's a good fellow. Fortune of war, you know. Anything else? Here he closed his eyes, and seemed gone. But he wakes up again, and begins in a dreamy way. His words came slowly, but his voice never altered one bit. I'm sorry I fired at poor Warren Gaul now. No dog was ever more faithful than he has been to me, all through this till now. But I was vexed at his having sold Dick and poor Jim. We knew we should find you here or hear abouts without that, says Sir Ferdinand. How was that? Two jockey boys you met one night, at Calga Gate, one of them recognized locket by the white patch on her neck. He wired us at the next station. So you were right after all, Dick. It was a mistake to take that mare. I've always been confoundedly obstinate. I admit that. Too late to think of it now, isn't it? Anything else I can do? says Sir Ferdinand. Give her this ring. He pulls it off his finger. And you'll see Maddie Barnes gets the old horse, won't you, poor old rainbow? I know she'll take care of him, and a promise is a promise. All right, he's the property of the government now, you know, but I'll square it somehow. The general won't object under the circumstances. Then he shuts his eyes for a bit. After a while he calls out, Dick, Dick Martson. I'm here, says I. If you ever leave this, tell Eileen that her name was the last word I spoke, the very last. She foresaw this day, she told me so. I had a queer feeling, too, this week back. Well, it's over now. I don't know that I'm sorry, except for others. I say, Moringer, do remember that last pigeon match you and I shot in, at Hurlingham? Why, good God, says Sir Ferdinand, bending down and looking into his face. It can't be. Yes, by Joe, it is. He spoke some name I couldn't catch, but Starlight put a finger on his lips and whispers. He won't tell, will you? Say you won't. The other nodded. He smiled, just like his old self. Poor Eileen, he says, quite faint. His head fell back. Starlight was dead. End of Chapter 49 Recording by Richard Kilmer, Real Medina, Texas Chapter 50 Of Robbery Under Arms This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Guang and Shi Robbery Under Arms, Viral Fouldwood, Chapter 50 The breath was hardly out of him when a horse comes tearing through the scrub onto the little plane, with a man on his back that seemed hurt bad or drunk. He rolled in his saddle so. The head of him was bound up with a white cloth, and what you could see of it was dark looking, with blood stains on it. I knew the figure and the seat on a horse, though I couldn't see his face. He didn't seem to have much strength, but he was one of those sort of riders that can't fall off a horse, that is unless they're dead. Even then, you'd have to pull him down. I believe he'd hang on somehow like a dead possum on a branch. It was warrigal. They all knew him when he came close up, but none of the troopers raised their pieces or thought of stopping him. If a dead man had rode right into the middle of us, he'd have looked like that. He stopped his horse, and slipped off on his feet somehow. He'd had a dreadful wound, anyone could see. There was blood on the rags that bound his head all up, and beamed round his forehead and over his chin, and made him look more and more like a corpse. Not much you could see, only his eyes, that were burning bright like two coals of fire. Up to Starlight's body, he goes and sits himself down by it. He takes the dead man's head into his lap, looks down at the face, and bursts out into the awfulest sort of crying and lamenting I ever heard of a living man. I've seen the native women mourning for their dead with the blood and tears running down their faces together. I've known them sit for days and nights without staring from round a corpse, not taking a bite or sub the whole time. I've seen white people that's lost an only child that had, maybe, been all life and spirits an hour before. But in all my life I have never seen no man, nor woman either, show such regular write down grief as Waragul did for his master. The only human creature he loved in the wide world, and him lying stiff on the ground before him. He lifts up the dead face and wipes the blood from the lips so careful, talks to it in his own language, or at least weighs his mothers, like a woman over a child. Then he's soft and groaned and shook all over as if the very life was going out of him. At last he lays the head very soft and gentle down the ground and looks round. Sir Ferdinand gives him his handkerchief, and he lays it over the face. Then he turns away from the men that stood round and got up looking that despairing and wretched that I couldn't help pitying him, though he was the cause of the whole thing as far as we could see. Sudden as a flash of powder he pulls out a small revolver, a derringer, star-liking him once, and holds it out to me, but end first. You shoot me Dick Marston, you shoot me quick, he says. It's all my fault. I killed him. I killed the captain. I want to die and go with him to the never-never country parson tell us about. Up there. One of the troopers knocked his hand up. Sir Ferdinand gave a nod, and a pair of handcuffs were slipped over his wrists. You told the police the way I went. Says I, it's all come out of that. Thought they'd grab you at Willa Rune, says he, looking at me quite sorrowful with his dark eyes, like a child. If you hadn't knocked me down that last time, Dick Marston, I'd never have done nothing to you nor Jim. I forgot about the old down. That brought it all back again. I couldn't help it. And when I see Jimmy Wardell, I thought they'd catch you and no one else. Well, you've made a clean sweep of the lot of us, Warrigal, says I. Poor Jim and all. Don't you ever show yourself to the old man or go back to the hollow if you get out of this. He's dead now. I'll never hear him speak again, says he, looking over to the figure on the grass. What's the odds about me? I didn't hear anymore. I must have fainted away again. Things came into my head about being taken in a car back to Coonamola, with Jim lying dead on one side of me and Starlight on the other. I was only half sensible, I expect. Sometimes I thought we were alive, and another time that the three of us were dead and going to be buried. What makes it worse, I've seen that sight so often since. The fight on the plane and the end of it all, just like a picture comes back to me over and over again. Sometimes in broad day as I sit in myself in the darkest midnight in the early dawn. It rises before my eyes, the bare plane and the dead men lying where they fell. Sir Fernand on his horse with the trooper standing around and the half cat sitting with Starlight's head in his lap, rocking himself to and fro and crying and moaning like a woman that's lost her child. I can see Jim too, lying on his face with his hat rolled off and both arms spread out wide. He never moved after. And to think that only the day before he had thought he might see his wife and child again. Poor old Jim, if I shut my eyes they won't go away. It will be the last sight I shall see in this world before I am. The coroner of the district held an inquest, and the jury found a verdict of justifiable homicide by Sir Fernand Mornger and other members of the police force of New South Wales in the case of one James Marston, charged with robbery under arms and of a man habitually known as Starlight, but of whose real name there was no evidence before the jury. As for the police, it was willful murder against us. Wurgle and I were remanded to tour and court for further evidence and as soon as we were patched up a bit by the doctor, for both of us looked like making a die of it for two or three weeks. We were started on the horseback with four troopers overland all the way back. We went easy stages. We couldn't ride any way fast. Both of us handcuffed and our horses led. One day, about a fortnight after, as we were crossing a river, Wurgle's horse stopped to drink. It was a swim in the middle of the stream and the trooper who was a young chap just from the depot let go of his bleeding ring for a bit. Wurgle had been as quiet as a lamb all the time and they hadn't a thought of his playing up. I heard a splash and looked around. His horse's head was turned to the bank and before the trooper could get out of the river he was into the river scrub in a way as fast as his horse could carry him. Both the troopers went after him and we waited half an hour and then went on to the next police station to stop till they came back. Next day late they rode in with their horses regularly done and knocked up, leading his horse but no Wurgle. He had got clear away from them in the scrub, jumped off his horse when they were out of sight, taken off his boots and made a straight track for the West Bogan scrub. There was about as much chance of running him down there as a brimby with a day start or a walleroo that was seen on a mountainside the week before last. I didn't trouble my head that much to think whether I was glad or sorry. What did it matter? What did anything matter now? The only two men I loved in the world were dead. The two women I loved best left forsaken and disgraced and I, well, I was on my way to be hanged. I was taken along to Turan and put into the jail there to await my trial. They didn't give me much of a chance to bolt and I wouldn't have taken it if they had. I was dead tired of my life and wouldn't have taken my liberty then and there if they'd given it me. All I wanted was to have the whole thing done and over without any more bother. It all passed like a dream. The court was crowded till there was an standing room. Everyone wanting to get a look at Dick Marston, the famous Bush ranger. The evidence didn't take so very long. I was proved to have been seen with the rest the day the escort was robbed the time the four troopers were shot. I was suspected of being concerned in Hagen's party's death and half a dozen other things. Last of all, when sub-inspector Goring was killed and a trooper, besides two others, badly wounded, I was sworn to as being one of the men that fired on the police. I didn't hear a great deal of it, but livened up when the judge put on his black cap and made a speech. Not a very long one. Telling about the way the law was set and not by men who had dared to infest the highways of the land and rob peaceful citizens with arms and violence. In a pursuit of gain by such atrocious means, blood had been shed and murder, willful murder had been committed. He would not further allude to the deeds of blood with which the prisoner at the bar stood charged. The only redeeming feature in his career had been brought out by the evidence tendered in his favor by the learned counsel who defended him. He had fought fairly when opposed by the police force and he had on more than one occasion acted in concert with a robber known as Starlight and the brother James Marston, both of whom had fallen in a recent encounter to protect from violence women who were helpless and in the power of his evil companions. Then the judge pronounced the sentence that I, Richard Marston, was to be taken from the place whence I came and there hanged by the neck until I was dead and might God have mercy upon my soul. My lawyer had beforehand argued that although I had been seeing the company of persons who had doubtless compass unlawfully slain of the queen's legis and peace officers, yet no proof had been brought before the court that day that I had willfully killed anyone. He was not aware, with his honor remark, that anyone had seen me fire at any man whether since dead or alive. He would freely admit that I had been seeing in bad company, but that fact would not suffice to hang a man under British rule. It was therefore incumbent on the jury to bring in a verdict for his client of not guilty, but that cock wouldn't fight. I was found guilty by the jury and sentenced to death by the judge. I expect I was taken back without seeing or hearing to the jail, and I found myself alone in a condemned cell with heavy leg irons worn for the first time in my life. The rough and tumble of a Bush ranger's life was over at last, and this was the finish up. For the first week or two I didn't feel anything particular. I was hardly awake. Sometimes I thought I must be dreaming that this man sitting in a cell, quiet and dull looking, with heavy irons on his limbs, could never be Dick Marston, the shearer, the stock writer, the gold miner, the bush ranger. This was the end, the end, the end. I used to call it out sometimes louder and louder till the order would come in to see if I had gone mad. Bit by bit I came to my right senses. I almost think I felt sharper and clearer in my head than I had done forever so long. Then I was able to realize the misery I had come down to after all our blowing and groving. This was a crush yard and no gateway. I was safe to be hanged in six weeks or thereabouts. Hanged like a dog. Nothing could alter that, and I didn't want it if it could. And how did the others get on? Those that had their lives bound up with ours, so that we couldn't be hurt without their bleeding, almost in their hearts. That is, mother's blood to death. At any rate, when she heard of Jim's death and my being taken, it broke her heart clean. She never held her head up after. Eileen told me in her letter she used to nurse his baby and cry over him all day, talking about her dear boy Jim. She was laid in the burying ground at St. Kilda. As to Eileen, she had long vowed herself to the service of the Virgin. She knew that she was committing sin in pledging herself to an earthly love. She had been punished for a sin by the death of him she loved. And she had settled in her mind to go into the coven at Sobiaca, where she should be able to wear out her life in prayer for those of her blood who still lived, as well as for the souls of those who lay in the little burying ground on the banks of the far war ago. Jeanne settled to stop in Melbourne. She had money enough to keep her comfortable, and her boy would be brought up in a different style from his father. As for Gracie, she sent me a letter in which she said she was like the bird that could only sing one song. She would remain true to me in life and death. George was very kind and would never allow anyone to speak harshly of his former friends. We must wait and make the best of it. So I was able, you see, to get bits of news even in the condemned cell from time to time about the outside world. I learned that Wall and Holbert and Moran and another fellow were still at large and following up their old game. Their time, like ours, was drawing short, though. Well, this has been a thundering long yarn, hasn't it? All my whole life I seem to have lived over again. It didn't take so long in the telling. It's a month today since I began, and this life itself has reeled away so quick. It hardly seems a dozen years, instead of seven and twenty since it began. It won't last much longer. Another week and it will be over. There is a fellow to be strung up before me for murdering his wife. The scoundrel, I wonder how he feels. I've had visitors, too. Some I never thought to see inside this jail wall. One day, who should come in the Mr. Folkland and his daughter. There was a young gentleman with them that they told me was an English lord, a baronet, or something of that sort, and was to be married to Miss Folkland. She stood and looked at me with her big innocent eyes, so pitiful and kind-like. I could have thrown myself down at her feet. Mr. Folkland thought the way, and asked me about this and that. He seemed greatly interested. When I told him about the last fight, and a poor gem being shot dead, and Starlight dying alongside the old horse, the tears came into Miss Folkland's eyes, and she cried for a bit, quite feeling and natural. Mr. Folkland asked me all about the robbery and Mr. Knightley's, and took down a lot of things in his pocketbook. I wondered what he did that for. When they said goodbye, Mr. Folkland shook hands with me, and said, He hoped to be able to do some good for me, but not to build anything on the strength of it. Then Miss Folkland came forward and held out her beautiful hand to me, to me, as sure as you live, like a regular thoroughbred angel, as she always was. It was very nigh cooked me. I felt so queer and strange. I couldn't have spoken a word to save my life. Sir George, or whatever his name was, didn't seem to fancy it over much, for he said, You colonists are strange people. Our friend here may think himself highly favored. Miss Folkland turned towards him, and held up her head, looking like a queen, as she was, and says she, If you had met me in the last place where I saw this man and his brother, you would not wonder at my avowing my gratitude to both of them. I should despise myself if I did not. Poor Jim saved my life on one occasion, and on another, but far more dreadful day, he, but words, mere words, can never express my deep thankfulness for his noble conduct, and were he here now, I would tell him so, and give him my hand if all the world stood by. Sir George didn't say anything after that, and she swept out of the cell, followed by Mr. Folkland and him. It was just as well for him to keep a quiet tongue in his head. I expect she was a great heiress as well as a great beauty, and people of that sort I found, mostly get listened to when they speak. When the door shut, I felt as if I'd seen the wings of an angel flit through it, and the prison grew darker and darker, like the place of lost souls. End of Chapter 50. Recording by Guang'an Xi Chapter 51. A robbery under arms. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Lucy Bergewin Robbery Under Arms by Rolf Boulderwood Chapter 51 One day I was told that a lady wanted to see me. When the door of the cell opened, who should walk in but Aileen? I didn't look to have seen her. I didn't bother my head about who was coming. What did it matter? As I kept thinking, who came or who went for the week or two that was to pass before the day? Yes, the day, that Thursday, when poor Dick Maston would walk over the threshold of his cell and never walk over one again. The water, him that stopped with me day and night, every man in the condemned cell has to be watched like that, stepped outside the door and left us together. We both looked at one another. She was dressed all in black, and her face was that pale. I hardly knew her at first. Then she said, Oh Dick, my poor Dick, is this the way we meet? And flings herself into my arms. How she cried and sobbed to be sure. The tears ran down her cheeks like rain, and every time the legions rattled, she shook and trembled as if her heart was breaking. I tried to comfort her. It was no use. Let me cry on, Dick, she said. I have not shed a tear since I first heard the news. The miserable truth that has crushed all our vain hopes and fancies. My heart has nearly burst for want of relief. This will do me good, to think, to think that this should be the end of all. But it is just, I cannot dare to doubt heaven's mercy. What else could we expect, living as we all did, in sin, in mortal sin? I am punished rightly. She told me all about poor mother's death. She never held up her head after she heard of Jim's death. She never said a hard word about anyone. It was God's will, she thought, and only for his mercy things might have gone worse. The only pleasure she had in her last days was impetting Jim's boy. He was a fine little chap, and had eyes like his father, poor old Jim. Then Aileen broke down altogether, and it was a while before she could speak again. Jeannie was the same as she had been from the first, only so quiet they could hardly know how much she felt. She wouldn't leave the little cottage where she had been so happy with Jim, and liked to work in the chair opposite to where Jim used to sit and smoke his pipe in the evenings. Most of her friends lived in Melbourne, and she reckoned to stay there for the rest of her life. As to father, they had never heard a word from him, hardly knew whether he was dead or alive. There was some kind of report that Warrigal had been seen making towards Nullar Mountain, looking very weak and miserable, on a knocked up horse, but they did not know whether it was true or false. Poor Aileen stopped till we were all locked up for the night. She seemed as if she couldn't bear to leave me. She had no more hope or tie in life, she said. I was the only one of her people she was likely to see again, and this was the last time, the last time. O Dick, O my poor lost brother, she said, how clearly I seem to see all things now. Why could we not do so before? I have had my sinful worldly dream of happiness, and death has ended it. When I heard of his death and Jim's, my heart turned to stone. All the strength I have shall be given to religion from this out. I can ease my heart and mortify the flesh for the good of my soul. To God, to Holy Virgin, who hears the sorrows of such as me, I can pray day and night for their soul's welfare, for mine, for yours. And O Dick, think when that day, that dreadful day, comes that Aileen is praying for you. We'll pray for you till her own miserable life ends. And now, goodbye, we shall meet on this earth no more. Pray, say that you will pray. Pray now that we may meet in heaven. She harm drew me to my knees. She knelt down herself on the cold stone floor of the cell, and I, well, I seem to remember the old days, when we were both children, and used to kneel down by mother's bed, the three of us. Aileen in the middle and one of us boys on each side. The old time came back to me, and I cried like a child. I wasn't ashamed of it, and when she stood up and said goodbye, goodbye, Dick, I felt a sort of rushing of the blood to my head, and all my wounds seemed as if they would break out again. I very near fell down, what with one thing and another. I sat myself down on my bed, and I hid my face in my hands. When I looked up, she was gone. After that, day after day, went on, and I scarcely kept count, until somehow I found out it was the last week. They partly told me on the Sunday. The person, a good, straight manly man, he was, he had me told for fear I should go too close up to it, and not have time to prepare. Prepare, how was a man like me to prepare? I'd done everything I'd amined to for years and years. Some good things, some bad, mostly bad. How was I to repent? Just to say I was sorry for them. I wasn't that particular sorry either. That was the worst of it. A deal of old life was dashed good fun, and I'd not say, if I had the chance, that I wouldn't do just the same over again. Sometimes I felt as if I ought to understand what the person tried to hammer into my head, but I couldn't do anything but make a jumble of it. It came natural to me to do some things, and I did them. If I had stopped dead and bucked at Father's wanting me and Jim to help duff those weeners, I really believe all might have come right. Jim said afterwards, he'd made up his mind to have another try at getting me to join with George Storfield in that fencing job. After that we could have gone into the outside station work with him, just the thing that would have suited the pair of us, and what a grand finish we might have made of it if we ran a waiting race, and where were we now? Jim dead, Aileen dead to the world, and me to be hanged on Thursday. Poor Mother dead and broken hearted before her time. We couldn't have done worse. We might, we must have done better. I did repent in that sort of way of all we've done since that first wrong turn. It's the wrong turn-off that makes a man lose his way, but as for the rest I had only a dull, heavy feeling that my time was come, and I must make the best of it and meet it like a man. So the day came, the last day. What a queer feeling it was when I lay down that night, that I should never want to sleep again or try to do it, that I had seen the sunset least ways the day grow dark for the last time, that very last time. Somehow I wasn't that much in fear of it as you might think. It was strange like, but made one pull himself together a bit. Thousands and millions of people had died in all sorts of ways and shapes since the beginning of the world. Why shouldn't I be able to go through with it like another? I was a long time lying and thinking before I thought of sleeping. All the small, teeny bits of a man's life, as well as the big, seemed to come up before me as I lay there. The first things I could recollect at Rocky Flat, then the pony, mother a youngish woman, father always hard-looking, but so different from what he came to be afterwards. Aileen, a little girl, with her dark hair, falling over her shoulders, then a grown woman, riding her own horse, and full of smiles and fun. Then a pale, weeping woman, all in black, looking like a mourner at a funeral. Jim too, and Starlight, now galloping along through the forest at night, laughing, drinking, enjoying themselves at Jonathan Barnes, with the bright eyes of Bella and Maddie, shining with fun and devilment. Then both of them lying dead at the flat by Murray Nebone Creek. Starlight with the half-cast, making his wild moan over him. Jim quiet in death as in life, lying in the grass, looking as if he had slid off his horse in that hot weather to take a bang. And now, no get away, the rope, the hangman. I must have gone to sleep, after all, for the sun was shining into the cell when I stirred, and I could see the chains on my ankles that I had worn all these weary weeks. How could I sleep, but I had for all that. It was daylight, more than that sunrise. I listened, and, sure enough, I heard two or three at the bush birds calling. It reminded me of being a boy again, and listening to the birds at dawn, just before it was time to get up. When I was a boy, was I ever a boy? How long was it ago, and now? Oh my God, my God! That ever it should have come to this. What am I waiting for to hear now? The tread of men, the smith that knocks the irons off the limbs that are so soon to be as cold as the jangling jains. Yes, at last I hear their footsteps, hear they come. The water, the black smith, the parson, the head jailer, just as I expected. The smith begins to cut the rivets. Somehow they none of them look so as I expected. Surely when a man is to be killed by law, choked to death in cold blood, people might look a bit serious. Mind you, I believe men ought to be hanged. I don't hold with any of that rot that them, as commits murder, shouldn't pay for it with their own lives. It's the only way they can pay for it, and make sure they don't do it again. Some men can stand anything but the rope. Prison wolves don't frighten them, but Jack Ketch does. They can't gammon him. Knock off his irons quick, says Mr Fairly, the parson. He will not want them again just yet. I didn't think you would make a joke of that sort, sir, says I. It's a little hard on a man, ain't it, that we may as well take it cheerful too. Tell him all, Mr Strickland. He says to the head jailer, I see he can bear it now. Prisoner Richard Mastin says the jailer, standing up before me. It becomes my duty to inform you that, owing to representations made in your favour by the honourable Mr Faulkland, the honourable Mr Storfield, and other gentlemen who have interested themselves in your case, setting forth the facts that, although mixed up with criminals and known to be present when the escort and various other cases of robbery under arms have taken place, wherein life has been taken, there is no distinct evidence of your having personally taken life. On the other hand, in several instances yourself, with the late James Mastin and the deceased person known as Starlight had aided in the protection of life and property, the Governor and the Executive Council have therefore graciously been pleased to commute your sentence of death to that of 15 years imprisonment. When I came to, I was lying on my blankets in a different cell, as I could see by the shape of it, the irons didn't rattle when I moved. I was surprised when I looked and saw they were took off. Bit by bit it all came back to me. I was not to be hanged. My life was saved, if it was worth saving. By the two or three good things we'd done in our time, and almost I thought, more for poor old Jim's sake than my own. Was I glad or sorry now, it was all over. I hardly knew. For a week or two I felt as if they'd better have finished me off when I was ready and have done with me. But after a while I began to feel different. Then the jailer talked to me a bit. He never said much to prisoners, and what he said he meant. Prisoner Mastin says he, you'd better think over your situation and don't mope. Make up your mind like a man. You may have friends that you'd like to live for. Pull yourself together and face your sentence like a man. You're a young man now, and you won't be an old one when you're let out. If your conduct is uniformly good, you'll be out in twelve years. Settle yourself to serve that, and you're a lucky man to have no more, and you may have some comfort in your life yet. Then he went out. He didn't wait to see what effect it had on me. If I wasn't a fool, he thought to himself, I must take it in. If I was, nothing would do me any good. I took his advice and settled myself down to think it over. It was a good while, a weary lot of years to wait, year by year. But still, if I got out in twelve years, I should not be so out and out broke down after all. Not much, over forty, and there's a deal of life for a man sometimes after that. And then I knew that there would be one that would be true to me anyhow. That would wait for me when I went out, and that would not be too proud to join in her life and mine. For all that had come and gone. Well, this might give me strength. I don't think anything else could, and from that hour I made up my mind to tackle it steady and patient, to do the best I could, and to work out my sentence, thankful for the mercy that had been showed to me. And if ever a man was in this world, resolve to keep clear of all crossways for the future. So I began to steady myself and tried to bear it the best way I could. Other men were in for long sentences, and they seemed to be able to keep alive, so why shouldn't I? Just at the first I wasn't sure whether I could, year after year to be shut up there, with the grass growing and the trees waving outside, and the world full of people, free to walk or ride, to work or play, people that had wives and children and friends and relations. It seemed awful that I should be condemned to live in this shut up tomb all those long weary years, and there was nothing else for it. I couldn't eat or sleep at first, and kept starting up at night, thinking they was coming for me to carry me off to the gallows. Then I dreamed that Jim and Starlight was alive, and that we'd all got out of jail, and were riding through the bush at night, to the hollow again. Then I'd wake up and know they were dead and I was here, time after time I've done that, and I was that broken down and low, that I burst out crying like a child. End of Chapter 51 Chapter 52 of Robbery Under Arms This is a LibriVox recording, all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Mike Harris. Robbery Under Arms by Ralph Baldrowood Chapter 52 The months went on till I began to think it was a long time since anything had been heard of father. I didn't expect to have a letter or anything, but I knew he must take a run outside now and again, and so sure as he did it would come to my ears somehow. One day I had a newspaper passed, and to me it was against the regulations, but I did get it for all that, and this was the first thing I saw. Strange discovery in the Turan district. The story went on to say a remarkable natural formation leading to curious results was last week accidentally hit upon by a party of prospectors, and by them made known to the police of the district. It may tend to solve the doubts which for the last few years have troubled the public at large, with respect to the periodical disappearance of a certain gang of bush rangers now broken up. Accident led the gold miners who were anxious to find a practicable track to the gullies at the foot of Nullar Mountain to observe a narrow winding way apparently leading over the brow of the precipice on its western face. To their surprise, half hidden by a fallen tree, they discovered a difficult but practicable track down a gully which finally opened out into a broad, well-grast valley of considerable extent in which cattle and horses were grazing. No signs of human habitation were first visible, but after a patient's search a cave in the eastern angle of the range was discovered. Fires had been lighted habitually near the mouth, and near a log two saddles and bridles, long unused, lay in the tall grass. Hard by was stretched the body of a man of swarthy complexion. Upon examination the skull was found to be fractured if by some blunt instrument. The revolver of small size lay on his right side. Proceeding to the interior of the cave, which had evidently been used as a dwelling for many years past, they came upon the corpse of another man in a sitting position, propped up against the wall. One arm rested upon an empty spirit keg beside which were a tin panic and a few rude cooking utensils. At his feet lay the skeleton of a dog. The whole group had evidently been dead for a considerable time. Further search revealed large supplies of clothes, saddle-ray arms, and ammunition, all placed in recesses of the cave, besides other articles which would appear to have been deposited in that secure receptacle many years since. As may be imagined, a large amount of interest and even excitement was caused when the circumstances as reported to the police became generally known. A number of our leading citizens together with many of the adjoining station holders had once repaired to the spot. No difficulty was felt in identifying the bodies as those of Ben Marston, the father of the two Bush Rangers of that name, and of Warrigal, the half-caste follower always seen in attendance upon the chief of the gang, the celebrated Starlight. How the last members of this well-known, long-dreaded gang of free booters had actually perished can only be conjectured. But taking the surrounding circumstances into consideration and the general impression abroad that Warrigal was the means of putting the police upon the track of Richard Marston, which led indirectly to the death of his master and of James Marston, the most probable solution would seem to be that after a deep carouse the old man had taxed Warrigal with his treachery and brained him with the American ax found close to the body. He had apparently then shot himself to avoid a lingering death the bullet found in his body having been probably fired by the half-caste as he was advancing upon him ax in hand. The dog well-known by the name of Cribbe was the property and constant companion of Ben Marston, the innocent accomplice in many of his most daring stock-raise. Faithful under the end with the deep, uncalculating love which shames so often that of man, the dumb follower had apparently refused to procure food for himself and pined to death at the feet of his dead master. Though the philanthropist may regret the untimely and violent end of men whose courage and energy fitted them for better things, it cannot be denied that the gain to society far exceeds the loss. When the recesses of the Hollow were fully explored, traces of rude but apparently successful gold workings were found in the creeks which run through this romantic valley, long as invisible as the fabled gold cities of Mexico. We may venture to assert that no great time will be suffered to elapse ere the whole of the alluvial will be taken up, and the terrible Hollow, which some of the oldest settlers assert to be its real name, will re-echo with the sound of pick and shovel, perhaps to be the means of swelling those escorts which its former inhabitants so materially lessened. With regard to the stock pasturing in the valley, a puzzling problem presented itself when they came to be gathered up and yarded. The adjoining settlers who had suffered from the depredations of the denizens of the Hollow were gladly expectant of the recovery of animals of great value. To their great disappointment, only a small number of the very aged bore any brand which could be sworn to and legally claimed. The more valuable cattle and horses evidently of the choicest quality and the highest breeding resembled very closely individuals of the same breed stolen from various proprietors, but they were either unbranded or branded with a letter and numbers to which no stock owners in the district could lay claim. Provoking, as well as perplexing, was this unique state of matters wholly without precedent. For instance, Mr. Ronseville and his stud groom could almost have sworn to the big slashing brown mare, the image of the long-lost celebrity, termigant, with the same crooked blaze down the face, the same legs, the same high crope, and the peculiar way of carrying her head. She corresponded exactly an age to the date on which the grand thoroughbred mare, just about to bring forth, had disappeared from Bontagong. No reasonable doubt existed as to the identity of this valuable animal, followed as she was by several of her progeny, equally aristocratic in appearance. Still, as these interesting individuals had never been seen by their rightful owners, it was impossible to prove a legal title. The same presumptive certainty and legal incompleteness existed concerning Mr. Beau's shorthorns, as he averred, and Mr. Dawson's Devon's. Thou art so near and yet so far, as a provoking stockwriter hummed. Finally, it was decided, by the officials in charge, to send the whole collection to the public pound, when each proprietor might become possessed of his own, with a good and lawful title in addition, for a consideration, and to the material benefit of the government coffers. So it was this way the poor old hollow was dropped onto and the well-hidden secret blown for ever and ever. Well, it had been a good plant for us, and them has had it before our time. I don't expect there'll ever be such a place again. Take it all around. And that was the end of father. Poor old dad, game to the last. And the dog, too. Wouldn't touch bitter sup after the old man dropped. Just like crib that was, often and often I used to wonder what he saw in father to be so fond of him. He was about the only creature in the wide world that was fond of dad, except mother, perhaps, when she was young. She'd rather got a war out of her feelings for him, too, but crib stuck to him to his end. Faithful till death that some of them writing coves says, and warrigal. I could see it all sticking out as plain as a fresh track after rain. He'd come back to the hollow like a fool in spite of me warning him, or because he had nowhere else to go. And the first time dad had an extra glass in his head, he tackled him about giving me away and being the means of the two others' death. Then he'd got real mad and run at him with the ax. Warrigal had fired as he came up and hit him, too, but couldn't stop him in the rush. Dad got in at him and knocked his brains out there and then. Afterwards he'd sat down and drank himself pretty well blind, and then, finding the pains coming on him knowing he couldn't live, finished himself off with his own revolver. It was just the way I expected he'd make an ending. He couldn't do much all alone in his line. The reward was a big one, and there would always be someone ready to earn it. Jim and Starlight were gone and I was as good as dead. There wasn't much of a call for him to keep alive. Anyway, he died game, and he paid up all scores, as he said himself. I don't know that there's much more for me to say. Here I am boxed up like a scrubber in a pound year after year, and years after that, for I don't know how long. However, oh my God, however shall I stand it. Here I lie half my time in a place where the sun never shines, locked up at five o'clock in my cell, and the same door would never a move in it till six o'clock next morning. A few hours walk in a prison yard with a warder on the wall with a gun in his hand overhead. Then locked up again, Sundays and weekdays, no difference. Sometimes I think they'd better have hanged me right off. If I feel all these things now, I've only been a few months doing my sentence, how about next year, and the year after that, and so on and so on. Why, it seems as if it would mount up to more than a man's life to ten lives, and then to think how easy it might all have been saved. There's only one thing keeps me alive, only for that I'd have starved to death for want of having the heart to eat or drink, either. Or else have knocked my brains out against the wall whorled them low fits came over me. That one thing's the thought of Gracie Storfield. She couldn't come to me, she wrote, just yet, but she'd come within the month, and I wasn't afraid about her. Because whether it was ten years or twenty years, if she was alive, she'd meet me the day after I was free. Let who will see her? I must be brave and keep up my spirits for her sake, and I leans, though she was dead to the world would hear of my being out, and would always put my name in her prayers. Neither she nor I would be so very old, and we might have many years of life reasonably happy yet, in spite of all that had happened. So the less I gave way and made myself miserable, the younger I should look and feel when I came out. She was sure I repented truly of what I had done wrong in the past, and she for one, and George, good old kind George, had said he'd go bail that I'd be one of the squareest men in the whole colony for the future. So I was to live on, and hope and pray God to lighten our lot for her sake. I'd must be years and years since that time as I last wrote about. Offalong and miserable the time went at first. Now it don't go so slow somehow. I seem to have turned a corner. How long is it? Must be a hundred years. I've had different sorts of feelings. Sometimes I feel ashamed to be alive. I think the man that knocked his head against the wall of his cell the day he was sentenced and beat his brains out in this very gaol had the best of it. Other times I take things quite easy and feel as if I could wait quite comfortable and patient like till the day came. But will it? Can it ever come that I shall be a free man again? People who've come to see me many times, most of them the first year or two I was in, after that they seemed to forget me and get tired of coming. Didn't make much odds. But one visitor I had regular after the first month or two, Gracie, poor Gracie, used to come and see me twice a year. She said it wouldn't do her or me any good to come off on her, and George didn't want her to. But then two times she always comes, and if it wasn't for that I don't think I'd ever have got through with it. The worst of it was I used to be that low and miserable after she went for days and days after, that it was much as I could do to keep from giving it all together. After a month was passed I'd begin to look forward to the next time. When I'd done over eleven years—eleven years! How did I ever do it? At the time passed, and passed somehow, I got worried that they knew I was making a try to see if I couldn't be let out when I'd done twelve years. My regular sentence was fifteen and little enough, too. Anyhow, they knocked off a year or two from most of the long sentence men's time, if they've behaved themselves well in Gaul, and can show a good conduct ticket right through. Well, I could do that. I was too low and miserable to fight much when I went in. Besides, I never could see the pull of kicking up rows and giving trouble in a place like that. They've got you there fast enough, and any man that won't be at peace himself, or let others be, is pretty sure to get the worst of it. I'd seen others try it, never seen no good come of it. It's like a dog on the chain that growls and bites at all that comes near him. A man can take a sapling and half, kill him, and the dog never gets a show unless he breaks his chain. And that don't happen often. Well, I'd learned carpentering and had a turn at mat-making and a whole lot of other things. They kept me from thinking, as I said before, and the neater I did them and the more careful I worked, the better it went with me. As for my mats, I came quite to be talked about on account of them. I drew a regular good picture of rainbow and worked it out on a mat with different colored thrums, and the number of people who came to see that mat and the notice they took of it would surprise anyone. When my twelve years was within a couple of months or so of being up, I began to hear that there was a deal of in-and-out sort of work about my getting my freedom. Old George Storfield and Mr. Falkland, both of them in the upper house, and one or two more people that had some say with the government, was working back and edge for me. There was a party on the other side that wasn't willing, as I should lose a day or an hour of my sentence. And that made out I ought to have been hanged right away, as old Arizona Bill would have said when I was first taken. Well, I don't blame any of them for that, but if they could have known the feelings of a man that's done a matter of twelve years, and thinks he might, yes, might, smell the fresh air and feel the grass under his feet in a week or two, well, they'd perhaps consider a bit. Whatever way it came out I couldn't say, but the big man of the government people at that time, the minister, that had his say in all these sorts of things, took it into his head that I'd had about enough of it, if I was to be let out at all, that the steal had been pretty well taken out of me, and that, from what he knew of my people and so on, I wasn't likely to trouble the government again. And he was right. All I wanted was to be let out a pardoned man, and that had done bad things, and helped in worse, but had paid, and paid dear, God knows, for every pound he'd got crooked, and every day he'd wasted and crosswork. If I'd been sent back for them three years, I'd rarely believe something of Dad's old savage blood would have come up or most in me, and I'd have turned reckless and revengeable like to my life's end. Anyhow, as I said before the minister, he'd been into the gaol and had a look once or twice, made up his mind to back me right out, and he put it so before the governor that he gave an order for my pardon to be made out, or for me to be discharged the day my twelve years was up, and to let off the other three, along with my good behavior in the gaol, and all the rest of it. This leaked out somehow, and there was the deuce's own barney over it, when some of the parliament men and them sorts of coves in the county, that never forgives anybody, heard of it, they began to buck and no mistake. You'd have thought every bush ranger that ever had been shopped in New South Wales had been hanged or kept in gaol till he died. Nothing but petitions and letters to the papers, no end of bobbering. The only paper that had a word to say on the side of a poor devil like me was the Turan Star. He said that Dick Marston and his brother Jim, not to mention Starlight, who paid his debts at any rate, unlike some people he could name who had signed their names to this petition, had worked manly and true with the Turan Diggings for over a year. They were respected by all who knew them, and had they not been betrayed by a revengeful woman, might have lived, henceforth, a life of industry and honorable dealing. He, for one, upheld the decision of the Chief Secretary. Thousands of the Turan miners, men of worth and intelligence, would do the same. The Governor hadn't been very long in the colony and they tried it on all roads to get him to go back on his promise to me. They began bullying and flattering and preaching at him. If such a notorious criminal as Richard Marston was to be allowed to go forth, with a free pardon, after a comparatively short short, think of that short, imprisonment, what a bad example it will be to the rising generation and so on. They managed to put the thing back for a week or two till I was nearly drove mad with fretting and being doubtful which way it would go. Lucky for me it was, and for some other people as well, the Governor was one of those men that takes a bit of trouble and considers over a thing before he says yes or no. When he says a thing he sticks to it. When he goes forward a step he puts his foot down and all the blowing and cackling and yelping in the world won't shift him. Whether the Chief Secretary would have taken my side if he'd known what a dust the thing would have raised and how near his ministers, or whatever they call him, was to going out along with poor Dick Marston, I can't tell. Some people say he wouldn't. Anyhow he stuck to his word and the Governor just said he'd given his decision about the matter and he hadn't the least intention of altering it, which shows he knew something of the world as well as intended to be true to his own opinions. The whole thing blew over after a bit and the people of the country soon found out that there wasn't such another Governor, barren one, as the Queen had been sent and out of. The day it was all settled the head Gowler comes to me and says he, Richard Marston, the Governor and Council, has been graciously pleased to order that you be discharged from her Majesty's Gowl upon the completion of twelve years of imprisonment, the term of three years further imprisonment being remitted on account of your uniform good conduct while in the said Gowl. You are now free. I heard it all as if it had been the parson reading out of a book about some other man. The words went into my ears and out again. I hardly heard them, only the last word. Free. Free. Free. What a blessed word it is. I couldn't say anything or make it try to walk out. I sat down on my blankets on the floor and wondered if I was going mad. The head Gowler walked over to me and put his hand on my shoulder. He was a kind enough man, but from being took in so often he was cautious. Come, Dick, he said. Pull yourself together. It's a shake for you, I dare say, but you'll be all right in a day or two. I believe you'll be another man when you get out and give the light of those fellows that say you'll be up to your old tricks in a month. I'll back you to go straight. And if you don't, you're not the man I take you for. I got up and steadied myself. I thank you with all my heart, Mr. N., I said. I'm not much of a talker, but you'll see. You'll see. That's the best proof. The fools. Do they think I want to come back here? I wish some of them had a year of it. As soon as there was a chance of my going out, I had been allowed to grow, as they call it in there. That is, to leave off having my face scraped every morning by the prison barber with his razor. That was sometimes sharp and more times rough enough to rest the skin off you. Particularly if it was a cold morning. My hair was let alone too. My clothes, the suit I was taken in twelve years ago, had been washed and cleaned and folded up and put away and numbered in a room with a lot of others. I remembered I've gotten them new just before I started away from the hollow. They was brought to me, and very well they looked too. I never had a suit that lasted that long before. That reminds me of the yarn I heard at Jonathan Barnes's one day. There was a young chap they used to call Liverpool Jack about then. He was a free kind of fella, and good-looking, and they all took to him. He went away rather sudden, and they heard nothing of him for about three years. Well then he came back, and as it was the busy season, old Jonathan put him on and gave him work. It was low water with him, and he seemed glad to get a job. When the old man came in he says, Who do you think came up the road today? Liverpool Jack. He looked rather down on his luck, so I gave him a job to mend up the barn. He's a handy fella. I wonder he doesn't save more money, but he's a careful chap too. Careful, says Matty. How do you make that out? Why, says Jonathan, I'm dashed if he ain't got the same suit of clothes on he had when he was here three years ago. The old man didn't tumble, but both the girls burst out laughing. He'd been in the jug all that time. So I dressed myself in my own clothes. How strange it seemed. Even to the boots, and then I looked in the glass. I hadn't done that lately. I regularly started back. I didn't know myself. I came into prison a big stout brown-haired chap full of life, and able to jump over a dryon bullocks almost. I did once jump clean over a pair of pollars for a lark. And how was I going out? A man with a set kind of face and either one thing or the other, as if he couldn't be glad or sorry with a fixed staring look about the eyes, a half yellowish skin with a lot of wrinkles in it, particularly about the eyes, and gray hair, big streaks of gray in the hair of the head, and as for my beard, it was white. White. I looked like an old man and walked like one. What was the use of my going out at all? When I went outside the walls by a small gate, the head goller shook hands with me. He said, You're a free man now, Dick, and remember this. No man can touch you. No man has the right to pull you up or lay a finger on you. You're as independent as the best gentleman in the land, so long as you keep straight. Remember that. I see there's a friend waiting for you. Sure enough, there was a man that I knew that lived near Rocky Flat. He was a quiet, steady-going sort of farmer and never would have had no truck with us in our flash times. He was driving a spring cart with a good sort of horse in it. Come along with me, Dick, he says he. I'm going your way, and I promise George Stormfield I'd call and give you a lift home. I'm glad to see you out again, and there's a few more round Rocky Flat that's the same. We had a long drive, many a mile to go before we were near home. I couldn't talk. I didn't know what to say for one thing. I could only feel as if I was being driven along the road to heaven after coming from the other place. I couldn't help wondering whether it was possible that I was a free man going back to life and friends and happiness. Was it possible? Could I ever be happy again? Surely it must be a dream that would all melt away. I'd wake up as I'd done hundreds of times and find myself on the floor of the cell with the bare walls all around me. When we got nearer the old place I began to feel that queer and strange that I didn't know which way to look. It was coming on for spring and there'd been a midland drop of rain seemingly that had made the grass green and everything look grand. What a time had passed over since I thought whether it was spring or summer or winter. It didn't make much odds to me in there only to drive me wild now and again with thinking of what was going on outside and how I was caged up and likely to be for months and years. Things began little by little to look the way they used to do long and long ago. Now it was an old overhanging limb that had arched over the road since we were boys and there was a rock with a big courage-rung tree growing near it. When we came to the turn-off where we could see Nullar Mountain everything came back to me. I seemed to have had two lives, the old one and then a time when I was dead or next door to it. And now this new life. I felt as if I was just born. We'll get down here now, I said, when we came near the dividing fence. It ain't far to walk. That's your road. Ah, I'll run you up to the door, says he. It isn't far. You ain't used to walking much. He let out his horse and we trotted through the paddock up to the old hut. The garden don't look bad, says he. Them peaches always used to bear well in the old man's time and the apples and the quinces, too. Someone's had it took care on and tied it up a bit there. You've got a friend or two left, old man. And I'm one too, says he, putting out his hand and giving mine a shake. There ain't any one in these parts, as he'll cast it up to you as long as you keep straight. You can look him all in the face now and bygones will be bygones. Then he touched up his horse and rattled off before I could so much as say thank you. I walked through the garden and sat down in the veranda on one of the old benches. There was the old place, mighty little altered considering. The hut had been mended up from time to time, now a slab and then a sheet of bark. Else it would have been down long enough ago. The garden had been dug up and the trees trimmed year by year. A hinge had been put on the old gate and a couple of slip rails at the paddock. The potato patch at the bottom of the garden was sown and there were vegetables coming on in the old beds. Someone had looked after the place, of course I knew who it was. It began to get coldish and I pulled the latch, it was there just the same, and went into the old room. I almost expected to see mother in her chair and father on the stool near the fireplace where he used to sit and smoke his pipe. Eileen's was a little low chair near mother's. Jim and I used to be mostly on the veranda unless it was very cold and then we used to lie down in front of the fire, that is, if dad was away, as he mostly was. The room felt cold and dark as I looked in, so dreadful lonely too. I almost wish I was back in Gaul. When I looked around again I could see things had been left ready for me. So I wasn't to find myself bad off the first night. The fire was all made up ready to light and matches on the table ready. The kettle was filled in a basket close handy with a leg of mutton, bread and butter and eggs and a lot of things. Enough to last me a week. The bedroom had been settled up too and there was a good comfortable bed ready for any tired man to turn into. Better than all there was a letter signed, Your Own Gracie, that made me think I might have some life left worth living yet. I lit the fire and after a bit made shift to boil some tea, and after I'd finished what little I could eat I felt better and sat down before the fire to consider over things. It was late enough, midnight, before I turned in. I couldn't sleep then. But at last I must have dropped off because the sun was shining into the room through the old window with a broken shutter when I awoke. At first I didn't think of getting up. Then I knew all of a sudden that I could open the door and go out. I was in the garden in three seconds listening to the birds and watching the clouds rising over Nullar Mountain. That morning after breakfast I saw two people, a man and a woman, come riding up to the garden gate. I knew who it was as far as I could see him, George Storefield and Gracie. He lifted her down and they walked up through the garden. I went a step or two to meet them. She ran forward and threw herself into my arms. George turned away for a bit. Then I put her by and told her to sit down on the veranda while I had a talk with George. He shook hands with me and said he was glad to see me a free man again. I worked a bit and got others to work too, says he, mostly for her and partly for your own sake, Dick. I can't forget old times. Now you're your own man again and I won't insult you by saying I hope you'll keep so. I know it as sure as I stand here. Look here, George. I said, as there's a God in heaven, no man shall ever be able to say a word against me again. I think more of what you've done for me almost than a poor Gracie's holding fast. It came natural to her. Once a woman takes to a man, it don't matter to her what he is. But if you'd thrown me off, I'd have not blamed you. What's left of Dick Marston's life belongs to her and you. That day we Gracie and I were married very quiet and private. We thought we'd have no one at the little church at Bargo but George and his wife. The old woman and the chap has drove me home. Just as we were going into the church, who should come rattling up on horseback but Maddie Barnes and her husband, Mrs. Morton as she was now, with a bright-looking boy of ten or eleven on a pony. She jumps off and gives the bridle to him. She looked just the same as ever, trifle stouter, but the same saucy look about the eyes. Well, Dick Marston, as she, how are you? Glad to see, old man. You got him safe at last, Gracie, and I wish you joy. You came to Bella's wedding, Dick, and so I thought I'd come to yours. Well, you kept it so awful, quiet. How do you think the old horse looks? Why? Why, it's never rainbow, says I. It's twelve years and over since I saw him last. I don't care if it was twenty, since he said she here he is and goes as sounds a bell. His poor old teeth are getting done, but he ain't the only one that way, is he, Joe? He'll never die if he can keep him alive. I have to give him cornmeal, though, so as he can grind it easy. I believe she thinks more of that old mok than me and the children all put together, says Joe Morton. And why shouldn't I, says Maddie? Face and round at him just the old way. Isn't he the finest horse that ever stood on legs and didn't he belong to the finest gentleman that you or anyone else looked at? Don't say a word against him, but I can't stand it. I believe it. If it you was to lay a whip across that old horse in anger, I'd go away and leave you, Joe Morton. Just as if you was a regular black stranger. Poor rainbow, isn't he a darling? Here she stroked the old horse's neck. He was rolling fat and had a coat like satin. His legs were just as clean as ever, and he stood there as if he heard everything, moving his old head up and down the way he always did. Never still a moment. It brought back old times, and I felt soft enough, I tell you. Maddie's lips were trembling again, too, and her eyes like two coals of fire. As for Joe, he said nothing more and the best thing, too. The boy led Rainbow over to the fence, and old George walked us all into the church, and that settled things. After the words were said, we all went back to Georgia's together, and Maddie and her husband drank a glass of wine to our health and wished us luck. They rode as far as the turn off to Rocky Flat with us, and then took the tour on road. Good-bye, Dick, says Maddie, bending down over the old horse's neck. You've got a stunning good wife now, if ever any man had in the whole world. Mind you're an A-1 husband, or we'll all round on you and your life won't be worth having. And I've got the best horse in the country, haven't I? See where the bullet went through his poor neck? There's no lady in the land got one that's a patch on him. Steady now, Rainbow. We'll be off in a minute. You shall see my little Jim there. Take him over a hurdle-yard. He can ride a bit as young as he is. Pretty poor old Jim ain't here today, isn't it, Dick? Think of him being cold in his grave now. We here? Well, it's no use crying, is it? And off went Maddie at a pace that gave Joe and the boy all they knew to catch her. Well, we're to live here for a month or two till I get used to outdoor work and the regular old bush life again. There's no life like it to my fancy. Then we start bag-in baggage for one of George's Queenland stations, right away up on the bar coup, that I'm to manage and have a share in. It freshens me up to think of making a start in a new country. It's a long way from where we were born and brought up, but all the better for that. Of course, they'll know about me, but in any part of Australia. Once a chap shows that he's given up cross-doings and means to go straight for the future, the people of the country will always lend him a helping hand, particularly if he's married to such a wife as Gracie. I'm not afraid of any of my troubles in the old days being cast up to me, and men are so scarce and hard to get west of the bar coup that no one that once had Dick Marston's help at a muster is likely to remind him of such an old story as that of robbery under arms. And End of Robbery Under Arms by Ralph Baldrowood