 Chapter 25 Our next chance came through Father. He was the intelligent man and had all the news sent to him. Round about it might be, but it always came and was generally true. And the old man never troubled anybody twice that he couldn't believe in, great things or small. Well word was passed about a branch bank at a place called Balabri, where a goodish bit of gold was sent to wake the monthly escort. There was only the manager and one clerk there now, the other cove having gone away on sick leave. Towards the end of the month the bank gold was heaviest and the most notes in the same. The smartest way would be to go into the bank just before shutting up time, three o'clock about, and hand a check over the counter. While the clerk was looking at it, out with a revolver and cover him. The rest was easy enough, a couple more walked in after. While one jumped over the counter and bailed up the manager, the other shut the door. Nothing strange about that. The door was all shut at three o'clock sharp. Nobody in town would drop to what might be going on inside till the whole thing was over. And the swag ready to be popped into a light trap and cleared off with. That was the idea. We had plenty of time to think it over and settle it all bit by bit beforehand. So one morning we started early and took the job in hand. Every little thing was looked through and talked over a week before. Father got Mr. White's buggy horses ready and took Waragul with him to a place where a man met him with a light four wheel Yankee trap and harness. Dad was dressed up to look like a back country squatter. Lots of them were quite as rough looking as he was, though they drive as good horses as any gentleman in the land. Waragul was talked out, something like a groom, with a bit of the station hand about him. Their saddles and bridles they kept with him in the trap. They didn't know when they might want him. They had on their revolvers underneath their coats. We were to go round by another road and meet at the township. Well, everything turned out first rate. When we got to Balabry, there was Father walking his horses up and down. They wanted cooling. My word, they'd come pretty smart all the way. But they were middling soft, being in the great grass condition and not having done any work to speak up for a goodish while, and being a bit above themselves in a manner of speaking. We couldn't help laughing to see how Solomon respectable dad looked. My word, said Jim, if he ain't the dead image of old Mr. Carter of Broadway, where are we sure three years back? Just such another hard-faced, cranky-looking old chap, ain't he, Dick? I'm that proud of him. I'd do anything he asked me now, blessed if I wouldn't. Your father's a remarkable man, says Starlight, quite serious. Must have made his way in life if he hadn't shown such a dislike to anything on the square. If he'd started a public house and appalled about the time he turned his mind to kettleduff and one of the fine arts, he'd have had a bank account by this time that would have kept him as honest as a judge. But it's the old story. I say, where are the police quarters? It's only managed to give him a call. We rode over to the barracks. There weren't much. A four-room cottage and log locked up with two cells, a forced old stable and a horseyard. Valibri was a small township with a few big stations, a good many farms about it and rather more public houses than any other sort of buildings in it. A writing chap said once, a large well-filled graveyard, a small church mostly locked up, six public houses gave the principal features of Valibri township. The remaining ones appear to be sand, bones, and broken bottles with a sprinkling of inebriates and black fellas. With all that, there was a lot of business done there in a year by the stores and hands, particularly since the Diggings. Whatever becomes of the money made in such places, where does it all go to? Nobody troubles their heads about that. A goodish lot of the first people was huddled away in the graveyard under the sand ridges. Many an old shepherd had hobbled into the traveler's rest with a big check for a fortnight spray and had stopped behind in the graveyard, too, for company. It was always a wonderful place for steadying Lushingtons, it was Valibri. Anyhow, we rode over to the barracks because we knew the senior constable was away. We got up a sham or stealing case the day before, threw some chaps there that we knew. This brought him off about 50 miles. The constable left behind was the youngest chap and we intended to have a bit of fun with him, so we went up to the garden gate and called out to the officer in charge of police quite grandly. Here I am, says he, coming out, buttoned up his uniform coat. Is anything the matter? Oh, oh, not much, says I, but there's a man sick of the sportsman's arms. He's down with the type of fever or something. He's a mate of ours and we come from Mr. Grant's station week. He wants a Dr. Fetch. Wait a minute till I get my revolver, says he, buttoning up his waistcoat. He was just fresh from the depot, plucky enough, but not up to half the waist of the bush. You'll do very well as you are, says Starlight, bringing out his pretty shop and pointing it full at his head. You stay there until I give you leave. He stood there quite stunned while Jim and I jumped off and muzzled him. He hadn't a chance, of course, with one of us on each side and Starlight threatening to shoot him if he raised a finger. Let's put him in the logs, says Jim. My word just for a lark. Turn for turn. Fair play, young fellow. You're being run in yourself now. Don't make a row and no one'll hurt you. The keys were hanging up inside, so we pushed him into the farthest cell and locked both doors. There were no windows and the lockup, like most bush ones, was built of heavy logs just roughly squared, with the ceiling the same sort, so there wasn't much chance of his making himself hurt. If any noise did come out, the town people would only think it was a drunken man and take no notice. We lost no time, and Starlight rode up to the bank first. It was about 10 minutes to three o'clock. Jim and I popped our horses into the police stables and put on a couple of their waterproof capes. The day was a little showering. Most of the people we heard afterwards took us for troopers from some other station on the track of bush rangers and not in regular uniform. It wasn't a bad joke, though. The police got well chaffed about it. We dodged down very careless like to the bank and went in a minute or two after Starlight. He was waiting patiently with the check in his hand till some old woman got her money. She counted it shillings, pence and all and then went out. The next moment Starlight pushed his check over. The clock looks at it for a moment and quick like says, How will you have it? This way Starlight answered, pointing his revolver at his head, and don't you stare or I'll shoot you before you can raise your hand. The manager's room was a small den at one side. They don't allow much room in country banks unless they make up their mind to go in for a regular swell building. I jumped around and took charge of the young man. Jim shot and locked the front door while Starlight knocked at the manager's room. He came out in a hurry, expecting to see one of the bank customers. When he saw Starlight's revolver, his face changed quick enough. But he made a rush to his drawer where he kept his revolver and tried to make a fight of it. Only we were too quick for him. Starlight put the muzzle of his pistol to his forehead and swore he'd blow out his brains there and then if he didn't stop quiet. We had to use the same words over and over again. Jim used to grin sometimes. They generally did the business, though, so of course he was quite helpless. We hadn't to threaten him to find the key of the safe because it was unlocked in the key in it. He was just locking up his gold in the day's cash as we came in. We tied him in the young fellow fast legs and arms and laid them down on the floor. While we went through the place, there was a good lot of gold in the safe all weighed and labeled ready for the escort, which called there once a month. Bundles of notes, two bags of sovereign silver and copper, the last we didn't take. But all the rest we bundled up or put into handy boxes and bags we found there. Father had come up by this time as close as he could to the backyard. We carried everything out and put them into his express wagon. He shoved a rug over them and drove off quite easy and comfortable. We locked the back door of the bank and chucked away the key, first telling the manager not to make a row for ten minutes, or we might have to come back again. He was a plucky fellow and we hadn't been rough with him. He had sense enough to see that he was overmatched and not to fight when it was no good. I've known bankers to make a regular good fight of it and sometimes come off best when their places were stuck up, but not when they were bested from the very start like this one. No man could have made a show if he was two or three men at one at the Valabre money shop. He walked slapped down to the hotel. Then it was near the bank and called for drinks. There weren't many people in the streets at that time in the afternoon and the few that did notice us didn't think we were any one in particular. Since the diggings broke out all sorts of travelers, a little out of the common were wandering all about the country. Speculators in minds, strangers, new chums of all kinds. Even the cattle-drovers and stockmen, having their pockets full of money, began to put on more side and dress in a flash way. The Bush people didn't take half the notice of strangers they would have done a couple of years before. So we had our drinks and shouted for the landlord and the people in the bar. Walked up to the police station, took out our horses, and rode quickly off while father was nearly five miles away on a crossroad, making Mr. White's trotters do their best time and with seven or eight thousand pounds worth of gold and cash under the driving seat. That I often think was about the smartest trick we ever did. It makes me laugh when I remember how savage the senior constable was when he came home, found his sub in a cell, the manager and his clerk just untied, the bank robbed of nearly everything, and us gone hours ago with about as much chance of catching us as a mob of wild cattle that got out of the yard the night before. Just about dark, father made the place where the man met him with the trap before fresh horses was put in, and the man drove slap away another road. He and Warrigal mounted the two brown horses and took the stuff in saddlebags, which they had brought with them. They were back at the hollow by daylight, and we got there about an hour afterwards. We only rode sharp for the first twenty miles or so and took it easier afterwards. If sticking up the gold-burned mail made a noise in the country, you may depend that the Balabre bank robbery made ten times as much. Every little newspaper and all the big ones from one end of the colony to the other were full of it. The robbery of a bank in broad daylight almost in the middle of the day, close to a police station, and with people going up and down the streets seemed too out and out cheeky to be believed. What was the country coming to? It was the fault of the gold that unsettled young fellow's mind, some said, and took them away from honest industry. Our minds had been unsettled long before the gold, worse luck. Some shouted for more police protection, some for vigilance committees, all bush rangers and horse thieves to be strung up to the next tree. The whole countryside was in an uproar, except the people at the diggings who had most of them been in other places and knew that compared with them, Australia was one of the safest countries any man could travel or live in. A good deal of fun was made out of our locking up the constable in his own cell. I believe he got blown up too and nearly dismissed by his inspector for not having his revolver on him and ready for use. But young men that were any good were hard to get for the police just then, and his fault was passed over. It's a great wonder to me more banks were not robbed when you think of it. A couple of young fellows are sent to a country place. There's no decent buildings or anything reasonable for them to live in, and they're expected to take care of four or five thousand pounds and a lot of gold as if it was so many bags of potatoes. If there's police there half their time away, the young fellows can't be all their time in the house, and two or three determined men, whether they're bush rangers or not, that like to black their faces and walk in at any time that they're not expected, can sack the whole thing and no trouble to them. I call it putting temptation in people's way. And some of the blame ought to go on the right shoulders. As I said before, the Little Affair made a great stir, and all the police in the country were round to balabra for a bit, tracking and tracking till all hours, night and day. But they couldn't find out what had become of the wheel marks, nor where our horse tracks led to. The man that owned the express wagon drove it into a scrubby bit of country and left it there. He knew too much to take it home. Then he brought away the wheels one by one on horseback and carted the body in a long time after with a load of wool, just before a heavy rain set in and washed out every track as clean as a whistle. Nothing in that here could keep people's thoughts long away from the diggings, which was just as well for us. Everything but the gold was forgotten after a week. If the harbor had dried up or Sydney town had been bedridden by an earthquake, nobody would have bothered themselves about such trifles as long as the gold kept turning up, hand over hand, the way it did. There seemed no end to it. New diggings jumped up every day, and now another big rush broke out in Port Phillip that sent everyone wilder than ever. Starlight and us too often used to have a quiet talk about Melbourne. We all liked that side of the country. There seemed an easier chance of getting straight away from there than any part of New South Wales, where so many people knew us and everybody was on the lookout. All kinds of things passed through our minds, but the notion we liked best was taking one of the gold ships bodily and sailing her away to a foreign port where her name could be changed and she never heard of again, if all went well. That would be a big touch and no mistake. Starlight, who'd been at sea and was always ready for anything out of the way and uncommon, the more dangerous the better, thought it might be done without any great risk or bother. A ship in Harba, he said, is something like the Balabry Bank. No one expects anything to happen in Harba. Consequently there's no watch kept or any lookout that's worth much. Any sudden dash with a few good men and she'd be off and out to sea before anyone could say knife. Father didn't like this kind of talk. He was quite satisfied where we were. We were safe there, he said, and as long as we kept our heads, no one need ever be the wiser how it was. We always seemed to go through the ground and no one could follow us up. What did we fret after? Hadn't we everything we wanted in the world? Plenty of good grub, the best of liquor and the pick of the countryside for horses. Besides living among our own friends and in the country we were born in, and that had the best right to keep us. If we once got amongst strangers and in another colony we should be given away by someone or another and to be sure to come to grief in the long run. Well, we couldn't go and cut out this ship all at once, but Jim and I didn't leave go of the notion, and we had many a yarn with starlight about it when we were by ourselves. What made us more set upon clearing out of the country was that we were getting a good bit of money together, and of course we hadn't much chance of spending it. Every place where we'd been seen was that well watched. There was no getting nigh it, and every now and then a strong mobile police ordered down by telegraph would muster at some particular spot where they thought there was a chance of surrounding us. However, that dodge wouldn't work. They couldn't surround the hollow. It was too big, and the gullies between the rocks too big and too deep. You could see across a place sometimes that you had to ride miles around to get over. Besides no one knew there was such a place, least wise, that we were there any more than if we'd been in New Zealand. Arms by Ralph Boulderwood Chapter 26 After the balladry affair we had to keep close for weeks and weeks. The whole place seemed to be alive with police. We heard of them being on Nellam Mountain and close enough to the hollow now and then, but Waragulla and the father had places among the rocks where they could sit up and see everything from miles around. Dad had taken care to get a good glass too, and he could sweep the country round about almost down to Rocky Flat. Waragull's eyes were sharp enough without a glass, and he often used to tell us he's seen things—men, cattle, and horses that we couldn't make out a bit in the world. We amused ourselves for a while the best way we could by horse-breaking, shooting, and whatnot, but we began to get awful tired of it, and ready for anything no matter what that would make some sort of change. One day father told us a bit of news that made a stir in the camp, and nearly would have jimmed me clear out altogether if we'd had any place to go to. For some time past, it seems, Dad had been grumbling about being left to himself so much, and except this last figment, and not having anything to do with the roadwork, it's all devilish fine for you and your brother and the captain there to go flashing about the country and sporting your figure on horseback while I'm left alone to do the house keeping and the hollow. I'm not going to be wood and water joy, I can tell you. Not for you nor no other man. So I've made it right with a couple of chaps as I've known these years past, and we can do a touch now and then, as well as you, grand gentlemen, on the high Toby, as they call it, where I came from. I don't think you are such an old fool, Ben—this from Starlight—but keeping this blaze here a dead secret is I'll sheet-ank up. Lose that, and we'll be run into in a week. If you let it out to any fellow you come across, you'll soon know all about it. I've known Dan Moran and Pat Burke now as long as I've known you for the matter of that, says Father. They're safe enough, and they're not to come here or know where I hang out neither. We have other places to meet, and what we do will be cleaned on, I'll go bail. It doesn't matter to straws to me as I've told you many a time, said Starlight, lighting a cigar. He always kept a good supply of them. But we'll see if Dick and Jim now don't suffer for it before long. It was as I told you about the place, wasn't it, growls, Father? Don't you suppose I know how to put a man right? I look to have my turn at steering this here ship, or else the crew better go ashore for good. Father had begun to drink harder, now that he used. That was partly the reason. And when he's got his liquor aboard he was that savage and obstinate there was no doing anything with him. We couldn't well part. We couldn't afford to do without each other. So we had to patch it up the best we could, and let him have his own way. But we none of us liked the newfangled way, and made sure bad would come of it. We all knew the two men and didn't half like them. They were the head men of a gang that mostly went in for horse-stealing, and only did a bit of regular bush-ranging when they were sure of getting clear off. They'd never shown up to fight in way yet, though they were ready enough for it if it couldn't be helped. Moran was a dark, thin wiry-looking native chap with a big beard, and a nasty, beady black eye like a snake's. He was a wonderful man outside of a horse, and as active as a cat, besides being a deal stronger than any one would have taken him to be. He had a trawling way of talking, and was one of those fellows that liked a bit of cruelty when he had the chance. I believe he'd rather shoot any one than not, and when he was worked up he was more like a devil than a man. Pat Burke was a broad-shouldered, fair complexion fellow, most like an Englishman. Though he was a native, too, he'd had a small station once, and might have done well, I was going to say, if he'd had sense enough to go straight. What rot it all is! Couldn't we all have done well if the devils of idleness and easy earned money and false pride had let us alone? Father said his bargain with these chaps was that he should send down to them when anything was up that more men was wanted for, and they was always to meet him at a certain place. He said they'd be satisfied with a share of whatever the amount was, and that they'd never want to be shown the hollow or the common eye. They had homes and places of their own, and didn't want to be known more than could be helped. Besides this, if anything turned up that was real first job, they could always find two or three more young fellows that would stand a flutter and disappear when the job was done. This was worth thinking over, he said, because there weren't quite enough of us for some things, and we could keep these other chaps employed at outside work. There was something in this, of course, and Dad was generally near the mark there or thereabouts, so we let things drift. One thing was that these chaps could often lay their hands upon a goodish lot of horses or cattle, and if they delivered them to any two of us, twenty miles from the hollow, they could be popped in there and either they or anyone else the wiser. You see, Father didn't mind taking a hand in the bush-ranging racket, but his heart was with the cattle and horse duffin' that he'd been used to for so long, and he couldn't quite give it up. It's my belief he'd have sooner made a ten-pound note by an unbranded colt or a mob of fat cattle than five times as much in any other way. Every man to his taste, they say. Well, between this new fad of the old man's and our having a notion that we had better keep quiet for a spell and let things settle down a bit, we had a long, steady talk, and the end of it was that we made up our minds to go and put in a month or two at the diggings. We took a horse of peace that weren't much count, so we could either sell them or lose them. It didn't make much odds which, and made a start for Jonathan Barn's place. We got word from him every now and then, and knew that the police had never found out that we'd been there, going or coming. Jonathan was a blowing, blathered, skiting fool, but his very foolishness in that way made them think he knew nothing at all. He had just sense enough not to talk about us, and they never thought about asking him. So we thought we'd have a bit of fun there before we settled down for work at the Touran. We took old saddles and bridles and had a midland-size swag in front, just as if we'd come a long way. We dressed pretty rough, too. We had longish hair and beards and except starlight. Might have been easy taken for down the river stockman or drovers. When we got to Barn's's place in, the old woman seemed ever so glad to see us. Bella and Maddie rushed out, making a great row and shattering both at a time. Why, we thought you were lost or shot or something, Bella says. You might have sent us a letter or a message only. I suppose you didn't think it worthwhile. What a bad state the country's getting in, said Maddie. Think of them bush rangers sticking up the bank at Balabry and locking up the constable in his own cell. Ha! Ha! Ha! The police magistrate was here late to-night. You should have heard Bella talking so nice and proper to him about it. Yes, said Bella, and you said they'd all be caught and hanged. That it was set in such a bad example to the young men of the colony. My word, it was as good as a plague. Mad was so full of her fun, and then the PM said they'd be sure to be caught in the long run. Maddie said they'd have to import some thoroughbred police to catch them, for our Sidney-side ones didn't seem to pace enough. This made the old gentleman stare, and he looked at Maddie as if she was out of her mind. Didn't he, Mad? I do think it's disgraceful of Goring and his lot not to have run them in before, said Starlight. But it wouldn't do for us to interfere. Ah! but, Sir Ferdinand, Mawranger is coming up now, says Maddie. He'll begin to knock saucepans out of all the boys between here and the Wedden Mountain. He was here, too, and asked us a lot of questions about people who were wanted in these parts. And he fell in love with Maddie, too, says Bella, and gave her one of the charms of his watch chain such a pretty one, too. He's going to catch Starlight's mob, as he calls them. Maddie said she'll send him word if ever she knows of their being about. Well done, Maddie, says Jim. So you may, just an hour or two after we're started. There won't be much likelihood of his overhauling us then. He won't be the first man that's been fooled by a woman, will he? All alas, Jim, says Bella. What do you say, Captain? Seems to me we're doing all the talking and you're doing all the listening. That isn't fair, you know. We like to hear ourselves talk, but fair play is bonny play. Suppose you tell us what you've been about all this time. And I think tea's ready. We had our innings in the talking line. Jim and Maddie made noise enough for half a dozen. Starlight let himself be talked to and didn't say much himself. But I could see even he, that had seen a lot of high life in his time, was pleased enough with the nonsense of a couple of good-looking girls like these. Regular bush-bread fillies as they were, after being shut up in the hollow for a month or two. Before we'd done a couple of travellers rode up, Jonathan's place was getting a deal more custom now. It lay near about the straight line for the Duran, and came to be known as a pretty comfortable shop. Jonathan came in with them and gave us a wink as much to say, It's all right. These gentlemen just came up from Sid Day, Jonathan said, not long from England and wants to see the diggings. I told him you might be going that way and could show them the road. Ah, very happy, said Starlight. I'm from Port Phillip Blast, myself, and I think of going back by Honolulu after I've made the round of the colonies. My good friends and travelling companions are on their way for the darling. We can all travel together. Ah, what a fortunate thing we came here, Clifford, huh? said one young man, putting up his eyeglass. If you want to push on, now we shall have company and not lose our way in this beastly bush, as they call it. Well, it does look like luck, says the other man. I was beginning to think the confounded place was getting farther off every day. Can you show us our rooms, if you please? I suppose we couldn't have a bath. Oh, yes, he can, said Maddie. There's the creek at the bottom of the garden only. There's stakes now, and then at night. I'll get your towels. In that case I think I should prefer to wait till the morning, says the tall man. It would be something to look forward to. We were afraid the strangers would have spoiled our fun for the evening, but they didn't. We made out afterwards that the tall one was a lord. They were just like anybody else, and when we got the piano to work after tea, they made themselves pleasant enough. And Starlight sang a song or two. He could sing, and no mistake when he liked. And then one of them played a waltz, and the girls danced together. And Starlight had some champagne in, said it was his birthday, and he just thought of it. And they got quite friendly and jolly before he turned in. Next day we made a start, promising the girls a nugget each for a ring out of the first gold we got. And they promised to write to us and tell us if they heard any news. They knew what to say. We shouldn't be caught simple if they could help it. Jim took care, though, to keep well off the road and take all the shortcuts he knew. We weren't quite safe till we was in the thick of the mining-crout. That's the best place for a man or a woman either to hide that wants to drop out of sight and never be seen again. Many a time I've known a man called Jack or Tom among the diggers, and never thought of as anything else, working like them, drinking and taking his pleasure and dressing like them, till he made his pile or died or something. And then it turned out he was the honorable Mr. So-and-so. Captain this or a major that. Perhaps the reverend somebody, though that didn't happen often. We were all a little more contented, though, when we heard the roar of the cradles and the clang and bang of the stampers and the quartz-crushing batteries again, and saw the big crowd moving up and down like a hill of ants, the same as when we left Torron last. As soon as we got into the main street we parted. Jim and I touched our hats, said goodbye to Starlight and the other two. We went away to the Crack Hotel. We went and made a camp down by the creek so that we might turn to and peg out a claim, or buy out a couple of shares first thing in the morning. Except the Hollow it was the safest place in the whole country just now, as we could hear that every week fresh people were pouring in from all the other colonies and every part of the world. The police on the diggings had their own work pretty well cut out for them, but with old hands from Van Diemen's land, Californians, and you may bet ruffs and rascals from every place under the sun. Besides we wanted to see for ourselves how the thing was done, and pick up a few wrinkles that might come in handy afterwards. Our dodge was to take a few notes with us, and buy into a claim, one here, one there, not to keep together for fear of consequences. If we worked and kept steady at it in a place where there were thousands of strangers of all kinds, it would take the devil himself to pick us out of such a queer, bubbling, noisy, mixed-up pot of hell broth. Things couldn't have dropped in more lucky for us than they did in this way. Starlight was asked by the two swells to join them, because they wanted to do a bit of digging just for the fun of it. And he made out he just come from Melbourne, and hadn't been six months longer in the country than they had. Of course, he was sunburnt a bit. He got that in India, he said. My word! They played just into his hand, and he did the new chums well all to pieces, so that naturally no one could have picked him out from them. He dressed like them, talked like them, and never let slip a word except about shooting in England, hunting in America and India, and besides gammoning to be as green about all Australian ways as if he'd never seen a gum-tree before. They took up a claim and bought a tent, and then they got a wages-man to help them, and all four used to work like niggers. The crowd christened them, the three honourables, and used to have great fun watching them working away in their jerseys and handling their picks and shovels like men. Starlight used to drawl just like the other two and asked questions about the colony, and walk about with them on Sundays and holidays in fashionable cut clothes. He'd brought money too, and paid his share of the expenses and something over. It was a great sight to see at night, and people said, like nothing else in the world just then. Everyone turned out for an hour or two at night, and then was the time to see the Turan in its glory. Big sunburnt men with beards and red silk sashes round their waist, with a sheath-knife and revolvers mostly stuck in them, and broad-leaved felt hats on. There were Californians, then foreigners of all sorts, Frenchmen, Italians, Germans, Spaniards, Greeks, Negroes, Indians, Chinamen. They were a droll, strange, fierce-looking crowd. There weren't many women at first, but they came pretty thick after a bit. A couple of theatres were open as circus, hotels with lots of pleat-glass windows and splendid bars all lighted up, and the front of them, anyhow, is handsome at first sight as Sydney or Melbourne. Drapers and grocers, ironmongers, general stores, butchers and bakers, all kept open till midnight, and every place was lighted up as clear as day. It was like a fairy-story place, Jim said. He was as pleased as a child with the glitter and show and strangeness of it all. Nobody was poor, everybody was well-dressed, and had money to spend from the children upwards. Liquors seemed to running from morning to night, as if there were creaks of it. Still, the same there was very little drunkenness and quarrelling. The police kept good order, and the miners were their own police, mostly, and didn't seem to want keeping right. We always expected the miners to be a disorderly rough set of people. It was actually quite the other way. Only we'd gotten into a world where everybody had everything they wanted, or else had the money to pay for it. How different it seemed from the hard grinding, poverty-stricken life we'd been brought up to, and all the settlers we knew when we were young. People had to work hard for every pound they made, then, and if they hadn't, the ready cash obliged to do it out, even if it was bread to eat. Many a time we'd had no tea and sugar when we were little because father hadn't the money to pay for it. That was when he stayed at home and worked for what he got. Well, it was honest money at any rate, but he hadn't kept that way. Now all this was changed. It wasn't like the same country. Everybody dressed well, lived high, and the money never ran short, nor was likely to, as long as the gold kept spreading and was found in ten, twenty, fifty pound nuggets every week or two. We had a good claim and began to think about six months' work would give us enough to clear right away with. We let our hair grow long and made friends with some Americans, so we began to talk a little like them just for fun, and most people took us for Yankees. We didn't mind that. Anything was better than being taken for what we were, and if we could get clear off to San Francisco there were lots of grand new towns springing up near the Rocky Mountains where a man could live his life out peaceably and never be heard of again. As for Starlight he'd laid it out with his two noble friends to go back to Sydney in two or three months and run down to Honolulu in one of the trading vessels, they could get over to the Pacific Slope or else have a year among the islands and go anywhere they pleased. They'd got that fond of Haughton, as he called himself, Frank Haughton, that nothing would have persuaded them to part company. And wasn't he a man to be fond of, always ready for anything always good-tempered except when people wouldn't let him, ready to work or fight her suffer hardship if it came to that, just as cheerful as he went to his dinner, never thinking or talking much about himself but always there when he was wanted. You couldn't have made a more out and out all round man to live and die with. And yet wasn't it a murder that there should be that against him when it came out that spoiled the whole lot? We used to meet now and then, but never noticed one another except by a bit of a nod or a wink in public. One day Jim and I were a busy puddling some dirt and we saw a sergeant goering ride by with another trooper. He looked at us, but we were splashed with yellow mud and had handkerchiefs tied over our heads. I don't think mother would have known us. He just glanced over at us and took no notice. If he didn't know us there was no fear of anyone else being that sharp to do it. So we began to take it easy and to lose our fear of being dropped on at any time. Ours was a midland good claim, too, two men's ground, and we were lucky from the start. Jim took to the pick and shovel work from the first and was as happy as a man could be. After our day's work we used to take a stroll through the lighted streets at night. What a place it had grown to be and how different it was from being by ourselves at the Hollow. The gold was coming in that fast that it paid people to build more shops and bring up goods from Sydney every week, until there wasn't any mortal thing you couldn't get there for money. Everything was dear, of course, but everybody had money and nobody minded paying two prices when they were washing, perhaps, two or three pounds weight of gold out of a tub of dirt. One night Jim and I were strolling about with some of our Yankee friends when someone said there'd been a new hotel opened by some Melbourne people, which was very swell, and we might take a look at it. We didn't say no, so we all went into the parlor and called for drinks. The landlady herself came in dressed up to the nines and made herself agreeable, as she might well do. We were all pretty well in, but one of the Americans owned the Golden Gate claim and was supposed to be the richest man on the field. He'd known her before. "'Well, Mrs. Molexon,' says he, "'so you pulled up stakes from Bendigo City and concluded to locate here. How do you approbate, Toran?' She said something or other. We hardly knew what. Jim and I couldn't help giving one look. Her eyes turned on us. We could see she knew us, though she hadn't done so at first. We took no notice, no more did she, but she followed us to the door and touched me on the shoulder. "'You're not going to desert old friends, Dick,' she said in a low voice. "'I wrote you a cross-letter, but we must forgive and forget, you know. You and Jim come up to-morrow night, won't you?' "'All right, Kate,' I said, and we followed our parting.' End of Chapter 26, Recording by Mike Harris. Chapter 27 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 Rolf Bolderwood. And this is Chapter 27. This meeting with Kate Morrison put the stunts upon me and Jim, and no mistake. We never expected to see her up at the Turan, and it all depended which way the fit took her, now, whether it would be a fit place for us to live in any longer. Up to this time we'd done capital well. We'd been planted as close as if we'd been at the Hollow, and we'd had lots of work and company and luck. It actually began to look as if our luck would be dead out. Anyhow, we were at the mercy of a tiger-cat of a woman who might let loose her temper at any time and lay the police onto us without thinking twice about it. We didn't think she knew Starlight was there, but she was knowing enough for anything. She could put two and two together, and wait and watch, too. It gave me a fit of the shivers every time I thought of it. This was the last place I ever expected to see her at. However, you never can tell what will turn up in this world. She might have got over her tantrums. Of course, we went over to the prospector's arms that night, as the new hotel was called, and found quite a warm welcome. Mrs. Mollickson had turned into quite a fashionable lady since the Melbourne days, dressed very grand and talked in shaft with the commissioner, the police inspectors, and goldfield officers from the camp, as if she'd been brought up to it. People lived fast in those goldfields' days. It didn't take long to pick up that sort of learning. The prospector's arms became quite the go, and all the swell miners and quartz reefers began to meet there as a matter of course. There was Dandy Green, the Lincolnshire man from Beavor, that used to wear no end of boots and spent pounds and pounds and blacking. He used to turn out with everything clean on every morning fit to go to a ball as he walked on to the brace. There was Ballersdorf, the old Prussian soldier, that had fought against Boney and owned a half a dozen crushing machines and a sixth share in the great Wattle Flat Company. Dan Robinson, the man that picked up the seventy pound nugget. Sam Dawson of White Hills and Peter Paul, Canadian, with a lot of others, all known men, went there regular. Some of them didn't mind spending fifty or a hundred pounds in a night if the fit took them. The house began to do a tremendous trade and no mistake. Old Mullickson was a quiet red-faced old chap who seemed to do all Kate told him and never bothered himself about the business, except when he had to buy fresh supplies and the wine and spirit line. There he was first chopped. You couldn't lick him for quality, and so the place got a name. But where was Genie all this time? That was what Jim put me up to ask the first night we came. Oh, Genie, poor girl, she was stopping with her aunt in Melbourne. But Kate had written to her, and she was coming up in a few weeks. This put Jim into great heart, what with the regular work and the doing well in the gold line, and Genie coming up for old Jim looked that happy that he was a different man. No wonder the police didn't know him. He'd grown out of his old looks and ways, and though they rubbed shoulders with us every day, no one had eyes sharp enough to see that James Henderson and his brother Dick, mates with the best men on the field, were escaped prisoners, and had a big reward on them besides. Nobody knew it, and that was pretty nigh as good as if it wasn't true. So we held on and made money hand over fist. We used to go up to the hotel whenever we'd an evening to spare, but that wasn't often. We intended to keep our money this time, and no publican was to be any the better for our hard work. As for Kate, I couldn't make her out. Most times she'd be that pleasant and jolly no one could help liking her. She had a way of talking to me and telling me everything that happened, because I was an old friend, she said, that pretty nigh knocked me over, I tell you. Other times she was that savage and violent and no one would go near her. She didn't care who it was, servants or customers. They all gave her a wide berth when she was in her tantrums. As for old Mullickson, he used to take a drive to sawp at Gulleyer, ten miles, and as ever he saw what a clock it was, and glad to clear out too. She never dropped on to me somehow. Perhaps she thought she'd get as good as she gave. I wasn't over good to lead and couldn't be drove at the best of times. No, not by no woman that ever stepped. One evening Starlight and his two swell friends came in quite accidental like. They sat down at a small table by themselves and ordered a couple of bottles of foreign wine. There was plenty of that, if you liked, to pay a guinea bottle. I remember when Common Brandy was that price at first, and I've seen it fetched out of a doctor's tent as medicine. It paid him better than his salts and rhubarb. That was before the hotels opened it, when all the grog was sold on the slide. They marched in, dressed up as if they'd been in George Street, though everybody knew one of them had been at the windlass all day with the wagesman, and the other two below, working up to their knees in water. For they'd come on a drift in their claim and were fuddling back. However, that says nothing. We were all in good clothes and fancy shirts and ties. Miners didn't go about in their working suits. The two honourables walked over to the bar, first of all, and said a word or two to Kate, who was all smiles and as pleasant as you please. It was one of her good days. Starlight put up his eyeglass and stared round as if we were a lot of queer animals out of a caravan. Then he sat down and took up the Turan star. Kate hardly looked at him. She was so taken up with his two friends and womanlike, bent on drawing them on, knowing them to be big swells in their own country. We never looked his way except on the slide, and no one could have thought we'd ever slept under one tree to get it, or seen the things we had. When the waiter was opening their wine, one of the camp officers comes in that they had letters to, so they asked him to join them, and Starlight sends for another bottle of Moselle, something like that he called it. The last time I drank wine, as good as this, says Starlight, was at the Café Troyer, something rather in Paris. I wouldn't mind being there again with the variety of theater to follow. Would you, Clifford? Well, I don't know, says the others. Well, I find this amazing good fun for a bit. I never was in such grand conditions since I left Oxford. This eight-hour shift business is just the right thing for training. I feel fit to go for a man's life. Just feel this, despot! And he holds out his arm to the camp swell. There's muscle for you! Plenty of muscle, said Mr. Despot, looking around. He was a swell that didn't work and wouldn't work and thought it fine to treat the diggers like dogs. Most of the commissioners and magistrates were gentlemen and acted as such, but there were a few young fools like this one, and they did the government a deal of harm with the diggers more than they knew. Plenty of muscle, says he, but devilish little society. Well, I don't agree with you, says the other honorable. It's the most amusing and in a way instructive place for a man who wants to know his fellow creatures I was ever in. I never pass a day without meeting some fresh variety of the human-raised man or woman, and their experiences are well worth knowing, I can tell you. Not the very enough hurry to impart them, for that there is more natural, unaffected good manners on a digging than in any society I ever mingled in, I shall never doubt. But when they see you don't want to patronize, and are content to be a simple man among men, there's nothing they won't do for you, I'll tell you. All damn one's fellow creatures, in present company, accept it, says Mr. Despot, filling his glass, and the man that grew this tipple. They're useful to me now and then, and one has to put up with his crowd, but I never could take much interest in them. All the worse for you, Despot, says Clifford. You're wasting your chances, gold and opportunities in every sense of the world. You will never see such a spectacle as this, perhaps again, as long as you live. It's a fancy-dressed ball with real characters. Dash at bad characters if we only knew, says Despot, yawning. What do you say, Hutton, looking at Starlight, who was playing with his glass and not listening much by the look of him? I say, let's go into the little parlor and have a game of piquet, unless you'll take some more wine. No? Then we'll move. Bad characters, you would say? Well, you campfellas ought to be able to give an opinion. They sauntered through the big room, which was just then crowded with a curious company, as Clifford said. I suppose there was every kind of man and minor under the sun. Not many women, but what there was, not a little out of the way in looks and manners. We kept on working away all the time. It helped to stop us from thinking, and every week we had a bigger deposit receipt in the bank where we used to sell our gold. People may say what they like, but there's nothing like a nest egg. Seeing it grow bigger keeps many a fellow straight, and he gets to like adding to it, and feels the pull of being careful with his money, which a poor man that never has anything worth saving doesn't. Poor men are the most extravagant I've always found. They spend all they have, which middling kind of people just above them don't. They screw and pinch to bring up their children and what not, and dress shabby and go without a lot, which the working man never thinks of stinting himself on. But there's the parson here to do that kind of thing. I'm not the proper sort of cove to preach. I'd better leave it to him. So we didn't spend our money foolish, like most part of the diggers that had a bit of luck. But we had to do a fair thing. We got through a lot of money every week, I expect. Talking of foolish things, I saw one man that had his horse shod with gold. Regular pure gold shoes. The blacksmith made them. Good solid ones and all regular. He rode into the main street one holiday, and no end of people stopped and lifted up his horse's feet to see. They weighed seven ounce, four penny weight each. Rainbow ought to have been shod that way. If ever a horse deserved it, he did. But Starlight didn't go in for that kind of thing. Now and then some of the old colonial hands, when they were regularly on the burst, would empty a dozen of champagne into a bucket or light their pipes with a ten pound note. But these were not everyday larks and were laughed at by the diggers themselves as much as anybody. But of course, some allowance had to be made for men not making much above wages when they came suddenly on a bigish stone and sticking the pick into it found it to be a gigantic nugget worth a small fortune. Most men go a bit mad over a stroke of luck like that, and that did happen every now and then. There was the one-air nugget, dug at Louisa Creek by an Irishman that weighed 364 ounces, 11 penny weight. It was sold in Sydney for 1156 pounds. There was the king of Maru nugget, weighing 157 ounces, and another one that only scaled 71 ounces, seemed hardly picking up after the others, only 250 pounds worth or so. But there was a bigger one yet on the grass, if we'd only known, and many a digger and shepherd too had sat down on it and lit his pipe, thinking it no better than other lumps of blind white quartz that lay piled up all along the crown of the road. Mostly after we'd done our day's work and turned out clean and comfortable after supper, smoking our pipes, we walked up the street for an hour or two. Jim and I used to laugh a bit in a queer way over the change it was from our old bush life at Rocky Flat when we were boys, before we had any thoughts beyond doing our regular day's work and milking the cows and chopping wood enough to last mother all day. The little creek that sounded so clear and the still night when we woke up, rippling and gurgling over the stones, the silent dark forest all round on every side, and on moonlight nights the moon shining over Nullamountain, dark and overhanging all the valley, as if it had been sailing in the clear sky over it ever since the beginning of the world. We didn't smoke then and we used to sit in the veranda and Eileen would talk to us till it was time to go to bed. Even when we went into Bargo or some of the other country towns, they did not seem so much brighter. Sleepy looking, steady going places they all were with people crawling about them like a lot of old working bullocks. Just about as sensible many of them. What a change all this was. Main street at the Turan, just as bright as day at twelve o'clock at night. Crowds walking up and down, bars lighted up, theatres going on, dance houses in full swing, billiard tables where you could hear the balls clicking away to daylight. Miners walking down to their night shifts, others turning out after sleeping all the afternoon, quite fresh and lively. Half a dozen troopers clanking down the street back from escort duty. Everybody just as fresh at midnight as at breakfast time, more so perhaps. It was a new world. One thing's certain, Jim and I would never have had the chance of seeing as many different kinds of people in a hundred years if it hadn't had been for the gold. No wonder some of the young fellas kicked over the traces for a change. A change from sheep, cattle and horses, plowing and reaping, shearing and bullock driving. The same old thing every day, the same chaps to talk to about the same things. It does seem a dead and live kind of life after all we've seen and done since. However, we'd have dealt better if kept to the bulldog's mutter, hang on and stick to it, even if it was a shade slow and stupid. We'd have come out right in the end as all coves do that hold fast to the right thing and stick to the straight course, fair weather or foul. I can see that now in many things else. But to see the big room with the prospector's arms at night, the hall they called it was a sight worth talking about, as Jim and I walked up and down or sat at one of the small tables smoking our pipes with good liquor before us. It was like a fairy tale come true to chaps like us, though we'd seen a little life in Sydney and Melbourne. What made it so different from any other place we'd ever seen or thought of before was the strange mixture of every kind and sort of man and woman. To hear them all jabbering away together in different languages or trying to speak English used to knock us all together. The American diggers that we took up with had met a lot of foreigners in California and other places. They could speak a little Spanish and French and got on with them, but Jim and I could only stare and stand open mouthed when a Spanish-American chap would come up with his red sash and his big sheath knife, while they'd yabber away quite comfortable. It made us feel like children, and we began to think what a fine thing it would be to clear out by Honolulu and so on to San Francisco as Starlight was always talking about. It would make men of us at any rate and give us something to think about in the days to come. If we could clear out what a heaven it would be, I could send over for Gracie to come to me. I knew she'd do that if I was only once across the sea ready and willing to lead a new life and with something honest earned and hard worked for to buy a farm with. Nobody need no. Nobody would even inquire in the far west where we'd come from or what we'd done. We should live close handy to one another. Jim and Jeannie, Gracie and I, and when Dad went under, Mother and Eileen could come out to us, and there would still be a little happiness left us. For all it was come and gone. Ah, things would only work out that way. Well, more unlikely things happen every day and still the big room gets fuller. There's a band strikes up in the next room and the dancing begins. This is a ball night. Kate has started that game. She's a great hand at dancing herself and she manages to get a few girls to come up wherever they come from, nobody knows, for there's none to be seen in the daytime. But they turn out wonderfully well dressed and some of them mighty good looking. And the young swells from the camp come down and the diggers that have been lucky begin to fancy themselves. And there's no end of fun, flirting and nonsense, such as there always is when men and women get together in a place where they're not obliged to be over particular. Not that there was any rowdiness or bad behavior allowed. A gold field is the wrong shop for that. Anyone that didn't behave himself would have pretty soon found himself on his head in the street, and luckily he came out of it with whole bones. I once tried to count the different breeds and languages of the men in the big room one night. I stopped at thirty. There were Germans, Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, Russians, Italians, Greeks, Jews, Spaniards, Frenchmen, Maltese, Mexicans, Negroes, Indians, Chinaman, New Zealanders, English, Irish, Scotch, Welsh, Australians, Americans, Canadians, Creoles, Gentle and Simple, Farmers and laborers, squatters and shepherds, lawyers and doctors. They were all alike for a bit. All pretty rich, none poor, or likely to be. All workers and comrades. Nobody wearing much better clothes or trying to make out he was higher than anybody else. Everybody was free with his money. If a fellow was sick or out of luck or his family was down with fever, the notes came freely. As many as were wanted and more than that was done. There was no room for small faults and vices. Everything and everybody was worked on a high scale. It was a grand time. Better than ever was in our country before or since. Jim and I always said we felt better men while the flash time lasted and hadn't thought of harm or evil about us. We worked hard enough too, as I said before, but we had good call to do so. Every week when we washed up we found ourselves a lot farther and could see that if it held on like this for a few months more we should have made our pile, as the diggers called it, and be able to get clear off without any bother. Because it wasn't now as it was in the old times when government could afford to keep watch upon every vessel big and little that left the harbor. Now there was no end of trouble in getting sailors to man the ships. We could have worked our passage easy enough. They'd have taken us and welcomed, though we'd never handled a rope in our lives before. Besides that there were hundreds of strangers starting for Europe and America by every vessel that left. Men who had come out to the colony expecting to pick up gold in the streets and had gone home disgusted. Lucky men, too, like ourselves, who had sworn to start for home the very moment they'd made a fair thing. How were any police in the world to keep the run of a few men that had been in trouble before among such a mixed up mob? Now and then we managed to get a talk with Starlight on the sly. They used to meet us at a safe place by night and talk it all over. He and his mates were doing well and expected to be ready for a start in a few months when we might meet in Melbourne and clear out all together. He believed it would be easy and said that our greatest danger of being recognized was now over. That we'd altered so much by living and working among the diggers that we could pass for diggers anywhere. Why, we were old dining at the commissioners yesterday, he said. Well, who should walk in but our old friend Goring? He's been made inspector now and, of course, he's a great swell and a general favorite. The commissioner knew his family at home and makes no end of fuss about him. He left for the southern district, I'm glad to say. I felt queer, I must say, but, of course, I didn't show him. We were formally introduced. He caught me with that sudden glance of his devilish sharp eyes he has, and looked me full in the face. I don't remember your name, Mr. Houghton, said he, but your face seems familiar to me somehow. I can't think where I've met you before. Must have been at the Melbourne clubs, as I put in my moustache, but a heap of Sydney people now. Perhaps so, says he. I used to go and lunch there a good deal. I had a month's leave last month, just after I got my step. Curious, it seems, too, says he. I can't get over it. Fill your glass and pass the clarrots, says the commissioner. Faces are very puzzling things met in a different state of existence. I don't suppose Houghton's want a day, Goring. This was held to be a capital joke, and I laughed, too, in a way that would have made my fortune on the stage. Goring laughed, too, and seemed to fear he'd wounded my feelings, for he was most polite all the rest of the evening. Well, if he didn't smoke you, says Jim, we're right till the day of judgment. There's no one else here that's half a ghost of a chance to swear to us. Except, says I. Oh, Kate, says Jim, never mind her. Gening's coming up to be married to me next month, and Kate's getting so fond of you again that there's no fear of her letting the cat out. Now, that's the very reason. I never cared too straws about her, and now I hate the sight of her. She's a revengeful devil, and if she takes into her head she'll turn on us some fine day, as sure as we're alive. Don't you believe it, says Jim. Women are not so bad as all that. Are they not, says Starline. I'll go bail, we'll be snug and safe here till Christmas, and then we'll give out. Say we're going to Melbourne for a spree and clear straight out. End of Chapter 27, Recording by Mike Harris Chapter 28 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 Rolf Baldrowood Chapter 28 As everything looked so fair, whether like Jim and Jeanie made it up to be married as soon as after she came up as he could get a house ready. She came up to Sydney, first by sea, and after that to the Diggings by coach. She was always a quiet, hard-working, good little soul, awful timid, and prudent in everything but intaking a fancy to Jim, but that's neither here nor there. Women will take fancies as long as the world lasts, and if they happen to fancy the wrong people, the more obstinate they hold onto them. Jeanie was one of the prettiest girls I ever set eyes on in her way, very fair and clear-colored, with big, soft, blue eyes, and hair like a cloud of spun silk. Nothing like her was ever seen on the field when she came up, so all the Diggers said. When they began to write to one another after we came to the tour on, Jim told her straight out that though we were doing well now, it mightn't last. He thought she was a great fool to leave Melbourne when she was safe and comfortable and come to a wild place in a way like the Tour on. Of course, he was ready and willing to marry her, but speaking all for her own good, he advised her not. She'd better give him up and set her mind on somebody else. Girls that was anyway good-looking and kept themselves proper and decent were very scarce in Melbourne and Sydney now, considering the number of men that were making fortunes and were anxious to get a wife and settle down. A girl like her could marry anybody, most likely someone above her own rank in life. Of course, she wouldn't have no one but Jim, and if he was ready to marry her and get a little cottage, she was ready to. She would always be his own genie and was willing to run any kind of risk so as to be with him and near him and so on. Starlight and I both tried to keep Jim from it all we knew. It would make things twice as bad for him if he had to turn out again, and there was no knowing the moment when we might have to make a bolt for it. And where could Genie go then? But Jim had got one of his obstinates fits. He said we were regularly mixed up with the diggers now. He never intended to follow any other life and wouldn't go back to the hollow or take part in any fresh cross work no matter how good it might be. Poor old Jim. I really believe he'd made up his mind to go straight from the very hour he was buckled to Genie, and if he'd only had common luck he'd have been a square and right as George Storefield to this very hour. Well, I was nearly forgetting about old George. My word. He was getting on faster than we were, though he hadn't a golden hole. He was gold-finding in a different way and no mistake. One day we saw a stoutish man drive up Main Street to the camp with a well-groomed horse and a dog cart and a servant with him. And who was this? But old George. He didn't twig us. He drove close alongside a Jim who was coming back from the creek where he'd been puddling with two shovels and a pick over his shoulder and a pair of old yellow trousers on, and him splashed up to the eyes. George didn't know him a bit, but we knew him and laughed to ourselves to see the big swell he'd grown into. He stopped at the camp and left his dog cart outside with his man. Next thing we saw was the commissioner walking about outside the camp with him and talking to him just as if he was a regular intimate friend. The commissioner was so proud that he wouldn't look at a digger or shake hands with him, not if he was a young marquee as long as he was a digger. No, the commissioner used to say, I have to keep my authority over these thousands and tens of thousands of people, some of them very wild and lawless, principally by moral influence, though of course I have the government to fall back on. To do that I must keep up my position and over familiarity would be the destruction of it. Well, when we saw him shake hands with old George and inviting him to lunch we asked one of the miners next to our claimant eating what that man's name and occupation was there. Oh, he says, I thought everybody knew him. That store field, the great contractor. He has all the contracts for horse feed for the camps and police stations, nearly everyone between here and Chandra. He took him lucky this year and he's making money hand over fist. Well done, steady old George. No wonder he could afford to drive a good horse in a swell dog cart. He was getting up in the world. We were a bit more astonished when we heard the commissioners say, I'm just about to open court, Mr. Storefield. Would you mind taking a few cases with me this morning? Well, we went into the courthouse just for a lark. There was old George sitting on the bench as grave as a judge and a rattling good magistrate he made, too. He disagreed with the commissioner once or twice and showed him where he was right, too, not in the law, but in the facts of the case, where George's knowing working men and their ways gave him the pull. He wasn't oversharp and hard either, like some men directly there raised up a bit just to show their power, but just seemed to do a fair thing, neither too much one way or the other. George stayed and had lunch at the camp with the commissioner when the court was adjourned, and he drove away afterwards with his upstanding Ahegini horse. Horses was horses in those days, just as good a gentleman to look at as anybody. Of course, we knew there was a difference, and he'd never get over a few things he'd missed when he was young in the way of education, but he was liked and respected for all that and made welcome everywhere. He was a man who didn't push himself one bit. He didn't seem anything, but his money and his good-natured, honest face, and now and then a bit of a clumsy joke to make him a place. But when the swells make up their minds to take a man in among themselves, they're not half as particular as commoner people. They do a thing well when they're about it. So George was hailed fellow-wellmet with all the swells at the camp and the bankers and big-storekeepers and the doctors and lawyers and clergymen. All the knobs there were the Toran, and when the governor himself and his lady came up on a visit to see what the place was like, why George was taken up and introduced as if he'd been a regular, blessed curiosity in the way of contractors, and his excellence he hadn't set eyes on one before. My word, Dick, Jim, says. It's a murder he and Ileane didn't cotton to one another in the old days. She'd have been just the girl to have fancied all this sort of swell racket with a silk gown and dressed up a bit. There isn't a woman here that's a patch on her for looks, is there now, except Jeannie, and she's different in her ways. I didn't believe there was. I began to think it over in my own mind and wonder how it came about that she'd missed all her chances of rising in life, and if ever a woman was born for it she was. I couldn't help seeing whose fault it was that she'd been kept back and was now obliged to work hard and almost ashamed to show herself at Bargo and the other small towns, not that the people were ever shy of speaking to her, but she thought they might be, wouldn't give them a chance. In about a month up comes Jeannie Morrison from Melbourne looking just the same as the very first evening we met Kate and her on the St. Kilda beach. Just as quiet and shy and modest looking, only a bit sadder and not quite so ready to smile as she'd been in the old days. She looked as if she'd had a grief to hide and fight down since then. A girl's first sorrow and something happened to her love. They never looked quite the same afterwards. I've seen a good many and if it was a real right down love they were never the same and looks her feelings afterwards. They might get over it as people call it, but that's a sort of healing over a wound. It won't always cure it and the wound often breaks out again and bleeds afresh. Jeannie didn't look so bad. She was that glad to see Jim again and to find him respected as a hard-working, well-to-do minor that she forgot most of her disappointments and forgave him his share of any deceit that had been practiced upon her and her sister. Women are like that. They'll always make excuses for men they're fond of and blame anybody else that can be blamed or that's within reach. She thought Starlight and me had the most to do with it, perhaps we had, but Jim could have cut loose from us any time before the Monberra cattle racket much easier than he could now. I heard her say once that she thought other people were much more to blame than poor James, people who ought to have known better and so on. By the time she'd got to the end of her little explanation, Jim was completely whitewashed, of course, and it always happened to him, and I suppose always would. He was a man born to be helped and looked out for by everyone he came near. Seeing how good-looking Jeannie was thought of and how all the swells kept crowding around to get a look at her, if she was near the bar, Kate wanted to have a ball and show her off of it, but she wouldn't have it. She right down refused and close upon quarrel with Kate about it. She didn't take to the glare and noise and excitement of Turan at all. She was frightened of the strange-looking men that filled the streets by day and the hall at the prospectors by night. The women she couldn't abide. Anyhow, she wouldn't have nothing to say to them. All she wanted, and she kept it Jim day after day till she made him carry it out, was for him to build or buy a cottage. She didn't care how small, where they could go and live quietly together. She'd cook his meals and mend his clothes and they'd come into town on Saturday nights only and be as happy as kings and queens. She didn't come up to dance or flirt, she said, in a place like Turan, and if Jim didn't get a home for her, she'd go back to her dress making at St. Kilda. This woke up Jim, so he bought out a miner who lived a bit out of the town. He'd made money and wanted to sell his improvements and clear out for Sydney. It was a small four-roomed weatherboard cottage with a bark roof, but very neatly put on. There was a little creek in front and a small flower garden with rose trees growing up the veranda posts. Most miners, when they're doing well, make a garden. They take a pride in having a neat cottage and everything about it chip-shaped. The ground, of course, didn't belong to him, but he held it by his miner's right. The title was good enough and he had a right to sell his goodwill and improvements. Jim gave him his price and took everything, even to the bits of furniture. They weren't much, but a place looks awful bare without them. The dog and the cock and hens he bought too. He got some real nice things in Turan, tables, chairs, sofas, beds, and so on, and had the place lined and papered inside quite swell. Then he told Jeannie the house was ready and the next week they were married. They were married in the church, that is the iron building that did duty for one. It had all been carted up from Melbourne, framework, roof, seats and all, and put together at Turan. It didn't look so bad after it was painted, though it was awful hot in summer. Here they were married, all square and regular, by the Scotch clergyman. He was the first minister of any kind that came up to the diggings, and the men had all come to like him for his straightforward earnest way of preaching. Not that we went often, but a good few of us diggers went every now and then just to show our respect for him. And so Jim said he'd be married by Mr. McKenzie and no one else. Jeannie was a Presbyterian, so it suited her all to pieces. Well, the church was chock-full. There never was such a congregation before. Lots of people had come to know Jim on the diggings, more had heard of him as a straight-going, good-looking digger, who was free with his money and pretty lucky. As for Jeannie, there was a report that she was the prettiest girl in Melbourne and something of that sort, so they all tried to get a look at her. Certainly, though, there had been a good many marriages since we had come to the Turan, the church had never held a handsomer couple. Jeannie was quietly dressed in a plain white silk. She had on a veil, no ornaments of any kind, her sorts. It was a warmish day and there was a sort of peach blossom color on her cheeks that looked as delicate as if a breath of air would blow it away. When she came in and saw the crowd of bronze-bearded faces and hundreds of strange eyes bent on her, she turned quite pale. Then the flush came back on her face and her eyes and looked as bright as some of the sapphires we used to pick up now and then out of the riverbed. Her hair was twisted up and a knot behind, but even that didn't hide the lovely color nor what a lot there was of it. As she came in with her slight figure and modest sweet face that turned up to Jim's like a child, there was a sort of hum in the church that sounded very like breaking into a cheer. Jim certainly was a big upstanding chap, strong, built but active with it and as fine a figure of a man as you'd seen on the Turan or any other place. He stood about six feet and an inch and was as straight as a Russian. There was no stiffness about him either. He was broad-shouldered and light flanked, quick on his pins and as good a man all round with his hands as you could pick out of the regular prize ring. He was as strong as a bullock and just as good at the end of a day as at the start. With the work we'd had for the last five or six months we were all in top condition as hard as a board and fit to work at any pace for 24 hours on end. He had an open, merry, laughing face at Jim with straight features and darkish hair and eyes. Nobody could ever keep angry with Jim. He was one of those kind of men that could fight to some purpose now and then but that most people found it very hard to keep bad friends with. Besides the minors there were lots of other people in church who'd heard of the wedding and come to see us. I saw starlight on the two honorables dressed up as usual besides the commissioner and the camp officers and more than that the new inspector of police had only arrived the day before Sir Ferdinand Morringer even he was there dividing the people's attention with the bride Besides that who should I see but Bella and Maddie Barnes and old Jonathan they'd ridden into the Turan for they'd got their riding habits on and Bella had the watch and chain starlight had given her. I saw her look over to where he and the other two were but she didn't know him again a bit in the world. He was sitting there tired with the whole thing hadn't seen a soul in the church before and didn't want to see him again. I saw Maddie Barnes looking with all her eyes at Jim while her face grew paler. She hadn't much color at the best of times but she was a fine grown listen good-looking girl for all that and as full of fun and games as she could stick. Her eyes seemed to get bigger and darker as she looked and when the person began to read the service she turned away her head. I always thought she was rather soft on Jim and now I saw it plain enough. He was one of those rattling jolly kind of fellows that can't help being friendly with every girl he meets and very seldom care as much for anyone in particular. He'd been backward and forward a good deal with father before we got clear of Burima and that's how poor Maddie had come to take the fancy so strong and set her heart upon him. It must be hard lines for a woman to stand by in a church or anywhere else and see the man she loves given away for good and all. Buckled hard and fast to another woman. Nobody took much notice of poor Maddie but I watched her pretty close and saw the tears come into her eyes though she let him run down her face before she'd pull out her handkerchief. Then she put up her veil and held up her head with a bit of a toss and I saw her pride and helped her to bear it. I don't suppose anybody else saw her and if they did they'd only think she was crying for company as women often do at weddings and all kinds of things but I knew better. She wouldn't peach poor thing still I saw that more than one or two knew who we were and all about us that day. We'd only just heard that the new inspector of police had come on to the field so of course everybody began to talk about him and wanted to have a look at it. Next to the commissioner and the PM the inspector of police is the biggest man in the country town or on a gold field. He has a tremendous lot of power inside of the law can do pretty much what he pleases. He can arrest a man on suspicion and keep him in gull for a month or two. He can have him remanded from time to time for further evidence and make it pretty hot for him generally. He can let him out when he proves innocent and nobody can do anything. All he has to say is there was a mistake in the man's identity or not sufficient proof. Anything of that sort. He can walk up to any man he likes or dislikes and tell him to hold up his hands for the handcuffs and shoot him if he resists. He has servants to wait on him to ride behind him. A handsome uniform like a cavalry officer and if he's a smart soldierly good-looking fellow as he very often is. He's run after a good deal and can hold his head as high as he pleases. There's a bit of risk sometimes in apprehending desperate bad characters and with bush rangers and people of that sort but nothing more than any young fellow of spirit would like mixed up with his work. Very often there are men of good family in the old country that have found nothing to do in this and have taken to the police. When it was known that this Ferdinand moranger was a real baronet and had been an officer in the guards you may guess how the flood of Goldfield's talk rose and flowed and foamed all around him. It was Sir Ferdinand of this and Sir Ferdinand of that wherever he went. He was going to lodge at the royal. No, of course he was going to stay at the camp. He was married and had three children not a bit of it he was a bachelor and he was going to be married to Miss Ingersoll the daughter of the bank manager of the back of New Holland. They've met abroad. He was a tall fine-looking man not at all only middle-sized hadn't old major trench the superintendent of police when he came to enlist and said he had been in the guards growled out too short for the gods. But I was not a private replied Sir Ferdinand but only how there's something about him nobody can deny he looks like a gentleman. My word he'll put some of these wed-mound chaps through their paces so we'll see. Says one minor. But he says another not if he has ten baronites in them all the same he's a manly looking chap and shows blood. This was the sort of talk we used to hear all around us from the minors from the storekeepers from the mixed mob at the prospectors arms in the big room at night and generally all about. We said nothing that took care to keep quiet and do and say nothing to be took hold of. All the same we were glad to see Sir Ferdinand. We'd heard of him before from Goring and the other troopers but he'd been on duty in another district and hadn't come in our way. One evening we were all sitting smoking and yarning in the big room of the hotel and Jim for a wonder he'd been washing up when we saw one of the camp gentlemen come in and a strange officer of police with him. Sort of whisper ran through the room and everybody made up their minds it was Sir Ferdinand. Jim and I both looked at him. Wow it's a lot of our Yankee friends. A lot of yard quests on the yard and actually I'd like a flock of geese on a corn patch. How do you fix it that all lords better than any other man? Well he's a bit different somehow I says. We're not going to kneel down or knock a lender to him but he don't look like anyone else in this room does he? He's no slouch and he looks here square and full in the eye like a hunter says Arizona Bill. But darn real buckskins if I can see why you Britishers set up idols and such and worship them in a colony just as if year was in that benighted old England again. We didn't say any more. Jim lit his pipe and smoked away thinking perhaps. More with a Sir Ferdinand was anything of a revolver shot and if he was likely to hit him Jim at 40 or 50 yards in case such a chance should turn up then about the difference of rank and such things. While we were talking we saw a starlight and one of the honorables come in and sit down close by Sir Ferdinand who was taking his grog at a small table and smoking a big cigar. The honorable and he jumps up at once and shook hands in such a hurry as we knew they'd met before. Then the honorable introduces starlight Sir Ferdinand we felt too queer to laugh Jim and I else we should have dropped off our seats when starlight bowed his grave as a judge and Sir Ferdinand we could hear asked him how many months he'd been out in the colony and how he liked it. Starlight said it wasn't at all a bad place when you got used to it but he thought he should try and get away before the end of the year. He couldn't help sniggering a bit at this especially when Arizona Bill said Lars another darn fool of operaticure Look at his eyed glass I wonder the field has not shaken some of that cussed foolishness out of them by this time. End of Chapter 28 Recording by Mike Harris Chapter 29 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 of Oldrowood Chapter 29 Jim and his wife moved over to the cottage in specimen gully the miners went back to their work and there was no more talk or bother about the matter. Something always happened every day at the tour on which wiped the last thing clean out of people's mind. Either it was a big nugget or a new reef or a tent robbery a gold buyer stuck up and robbed in the ironbarks a horse-stealing match or a fight at a dance house or a big law case accidents and defenses happened every day and any of them was enough to take up the whole attention of every digger on the field till something else turned up Not that we troubled our heads over much about things of this sort We'd set our minds to go on until our claims were worked out or closed up and to sell out and with the lot we'd already banked to get down to Melbourne and clear out Should we ever be able to manage that? It seemed getting nearer and nearer like a star that a man fixes his eyes on as he rides through a lonely bit of forest at night We'd all got our eyes fixed on it Lord knows and were working double tides doing our very best to make a pile worth while leaving the country with As for Jim he and his little wife seemed that happy that he grudged every minute he spent away from her He worked as well as ever better indeed He never took his mind from his piece of work whatever it was for a second But the very minute his shift was over Jim was a way along the road to Spessam and Gully like a cow going back to find your calf He hardly stopped to light his pipe now and we'd only seen him once uptown and that was on a Saturday night with Genie on his arm Well the weeks passed over and at long last we got on as far in the year as the first week in December We'd given out that we might go somewhere to spend our Christmas We were known to be pretty well in and to have worked steady all these months since the early part of the year We'd paid our way all the time and could leave at a minute's notice without asking any man's leave If we were digging up gold like potatoes we weren't the only ones No, not by a lot There never was a richer patch of alluvial I believe in any other fields and the quantity that was sent down in one year was a caution Wasn't the cash scattered about then? A talk of money it was like the dirt under your feet in one way certainly as the dirt was more often than not full of gold We could see things getting worse on the field after a bit we didn't set up to be any great shakes ourselves Jim and I but we didn't want the field to be overrun by a set of scoundrels that were the very scum of the earth let alone the other colonies We were afraid they'd go in for some foolish row and we should get dragged in for it That was exactly what we didn't want With the overflowing of the gold is it where came such a town and such a people to fill it as no part of Australia had ever seen before When it got known by newspapers and letters from the miners themselves to their friends at home what an enormous shield of gold was being dug out of the ground in such a simple fashion All the world seemed to be moving over At that time nobody could tell a lie hardly about the tremendous quantity that was being got and sent away every week This was easy to know because the escort returns were printed in all the newspapers every week So everybody could see for themselves what pounds and hundred weights and tons Yes, tons of gold were being got by men who very often as like is not hadn't to dig about 20 or 30 feet for it and had never handled a pick or a shovel in their lives before they came to the tour on There were plenty of good men at the diggings I'll say this for the regular miners that a more manly straight going lot of fellows no man ever lived among I wish we'd never known any worse We were not what might be called highly respectable people ourselves Still men like us are only half and half bad like a good many more in this world They're partly tempted into doing wrong by opportunity and kept back by circumstances from getting into the straight track afterwards But on every goldfielder scores and scores have been that always hurry off there like crows and eagles to a carcass to see what they can rend and tear and fatten upon They ain't very particular whether it's the living of the dead so as they can gorge their fill There was a good many of this lot at the toron and though the diggers gave them a wide birth and helped to run them down when they're committed any crime they couldn't be kept out of sight on society all together We used to go up sometimes to see the gold escort start It was one of the regular sites of the field and the miners that were off shift and people that hadn't much to do generally turned up on escort day The gold was taken down to sydney once a week in a strong express wagon something like a Yankee coach with leather springs on a high driving seat so that four horses could be harnessed One of the police sergeants generally drove a trooper fully armed with a rifle and revolver on the box beside him in the back seat set two more troopers with their Sniders ready for action Two rode a hundred yards ahead and another couple about the same distance behind We always noticed that a good many of the sort of men that never seemed to do any digging and yet always had good clothes and money to spend used to hang about a big escort or a light one it generally leaked out how many ounces had been sent by this bank and how much by that how much had come from the camp for the diggers who did not choose to sell to the banks were allowed to deposit their gold with an officer at the camp where it was carefully weighed and a receipt given to them stating the number of ounces penny weights and grains then it was forwarded by the escort deducting a small percentage for the carriage and safe keeping government did not take all the risk upon itself the miner must run his chance if he did not sell but the chance was thought good enough the other thing was hardly worth talking about who was to be gained to stick up the government escort with eight police troopers all well armed and ready to make a fight to the death before they gave up the treasure committed to their charge the police couldn't catch all the horse dealers and bush rangers in a country that contained so many millions of acres of wasteland but no one doubted that they'd make a first rate fight on their own grounds as it were before they'd let anything be taken away from them that had been counted out box by box and given into their charge we has little notion of trying anything of the sort ourselves then as we had a breaking into the treasury and sydney by night but those who knew used to say that if the miners had known the past history of some of the men that used to stand up and look on well dressed or in regular digger rig as the gold boxes were being brought out and counted into the escort drag they would have made a body guard to go with it themselves when they had gold on board or have worried the government into sending 20 troopers in charge instead of six or eight one day as jim and i happened to be at the camp just as the escort was starting the only time we'd been there for a month we saw warragal and moran standing about they didn't see us we were among a lot of other diggers so we were able to take them out of winding a bit they were there for no good we agreed warragal sharp eyes noted everything about the whole turnout the sergeant face that drove the way the gold boxes were counted out and put in a kind of fixed locker underneath the middle of the coach he saw where the troopers sat before and behind and alby bound came away with a wonderful good general idea of how the escort traveled and of a good many things more about it that nobody guessed at as for moran we could see him fix his eyes upon the sergeant who was driving and look at him as if he could look right through him he never took his eyes off him the whole time but glared at him like a maniac if some of his people hadn't given him a shove as they passed he would soon have attracted people's attention but the crowd was too busy looking at the well conditioned prancing horses and the neatly got up troopers of the escort dragged to waste their thoughts upon a common bushman however he might stare when he turned away to leave he ground out a red hot curse between his teeth it made us think that warragal was coming about with him on this line counted for no good they slipped through the crowd again and though they were pretty close they never saw us warragal would have known us however we might have been altered but somehow he never turned his head our way he was like a child so taken up with all the things he saw it is great grandfather might have jumped up from the fish river caves or wherever he takes his rest and warragal would never have wondered at him now that's a queer start says jim as we walked on our homework path I wonder what those two crawling dingo-looking beggars were here for never no good I say did you see that fellow Moran look at the sergeant as if he'd eat him what eyes he has for all the world like a black snake do you think he's got a particular down on him well not more than all police I suppose he'd rub him out every mother's son if he could he and warragal can't stick up the escort by themselves we managed to get a letter from home from time to time now we'd settle as it were at the Turan of course they had to be sent in the name of Henderson but we called for them at the post office and got them all right it was a treat to read Eileen's letters now they were so jolly and hopeful like besides what they used to be now that we've been so long it seemed years at the diggings and were working hard doing well and getting quite settled as she said she believed that all would go right and that we should be able really to carry out our plans of getting clear away to some country where we could live safe and quiet lives women are mostly like that they first of all believe all that they're afraid of will happen then as soon as they see things brighten up a bit their assurance fate everything's bound to go right they don't seem to have any kind of feeling in between they hate making up their minds most of them as I've known and jump from being ready to drown themselves one moment to being likely to go mad with joy another you take them they're better than men though I'll never go back on that so Eileen used to send me and Jim long letters now telling us that things were better at home and that she really thought mother was cheerful and stronger in health than she'd been ever since well ever since that had happened she thought her prayers had been heard and that we were going to be forgiven our sins and allowed by God's mercy to lead a new life she quite believed in our leaving the country although her heart would be nearly broken by the thought that she might never see us again and a lot more of the same sort poor mother she had a hard time of it if ever anyone ever had in this world and none of it her fault as I could ever see some people get punished in this world for the sins other people commit I can see that fast enough whether they get it made up to them afterwards of course I can't say they ought to anyhow if it can be made up to them some things that are suffered in this world can't be paid for I don't care how they fix it more than once too there was a line or two on a scrap of paper slipped in Eileen's letters from Gracie Storefield she wasn't half as good with the pen as Eileen but a few words from the woman you love goes a long way no matter what sort of a fist she writes Gracie made shift to tell me she was so proud to hear I was doing well that Eileen's eyes had been twice as bright lately that mother looked better than she'd seen her this year and if I could get away to another country any other country she'd meet me in Melbourne and would be as she'd always been your own Gracie that's the way it was signed when I read this I felt a different man I stood up and took an oath solemn mind you and I intended to keep it that if I got clear away I'd pay her for her love and true heart with my life what was left of it and I'd never do another crooked thing as long as I lived then I began to count the days to Christmas I wasn't married like Jim and it not being very lively in the tent at night Arizona Bill and I mostly used to stroll up to the prospectors arms we got used to sitting at the little table drinking our beer or what not smoking our pipes and listening to all the fun that was going on not that we always sat in the big hall there was a snug little parlor beside the bar that we found more comfortable and Kate used to run in herself when business was slack enough to leave the bar mate then she'd sit down and have a good solid yarn with us she made a regular old friend of me and as she was a handsome woman always well dressed with lots to say and plenty of admirers I wasn't above being singled out and made much of it was partly policy of course she knew our secret and it wouldn't have done to have let her let it out to or to be bad friends so that we should be always going in dread of it so Jim and I were always mighty civil to her and I really thought she'd improved a lot lately and turned out a much nicer woman than I thought she could be we used to talk away about old times regular confidential and though she'd great spirits generally she used to change quite sudden sometimes and say she was a miserable woman and wish she hadn't been in such a hurry and married as she had then she'd crack up genie and say how true and constant she'd been and how she was rewarded for it by marrying the only man she ever loved she used to blame her temper she'd always had it she said and couldn't get rid of it but she really believed if things had turned out different she'd have been a different woman and any man she really loved would never have had no call to complain of course I knew what all this meant but thought I could steer clear of coming to grief over it that was where I made the mistake but I didn't think so then for how much hung upon careless words and looks well somehow or other she wormed it out of me that we were off somewhere at Christmas then she never rested till she'd found out that we were going to Melbourne after that she seemed as if she changed right away into somebody else she was that fair and soft speaking and humble minded that Jeannie couldn't have been more gentle in her ways and she used to look at me from time to time as if her heart was breaking I didn't believe that for I didn't think she'd any heart to break one night after we left about 12 o'clock just as the house was shut up Arizona Bill says to me say Bart have your fixed it up to take that young woman along when you pull up sticks no I said isn't she a married woman and besides I haven't such a fancy for her as all that comes to you haven't he said speaking very low as he always did and taking the cigar out of his mouth Bill always smoked cigars when he could get them and not very cheap ones either well then I sure am I as you're living her I think quite contrary and there's bound to be a must if you don't hide your tracks and strike a trail she can't fall her on I began to think I've been two ends of a dash at full but what's a man to do see here now he said you have two Clara weeks a four yet you'll slack off and go slow that'll let her see you didn't sort her cotton to wear mourns and the regulations and have a row with her sartan says Bill and how they're shooting over right away that's a lady sight safer than letting her carry it in her mind and then laying for you someday when you have a nary thought of engines in your head that's the very time a woman like hers bound to close on your lift your heart if she can why how do you know what she's likely to do I've been smoking part while you've been talking sort of careless like I've had my eyes open and seen engine sign more and once or twice he do I've hunted with her drive a four I guess an old bill ain't forgot all the totems and the war paint after this bill fresh lit his cigar and wouldn't say any more but I could see what he was driving at and I settled to try all I knew to keep everything right and square till the time came for us to make our dart I managed to have a quiet talk with Starlight he thought that by taking care of being very friendly but not too much so we might get clean off without Kate or anyone else being much the wiser next week everything seemed to go on wheels smooth and fast no hitches anywhere Jim reckoned the best of our claim would be worked out by the 20th of the month and we'd as soon as agreed to sell our shares to Arizona bill and his mate who were ready as bill said to plank down considerable dollars for what remained of it if they got nothing worthwhile it was the fortune of war which a digger never growls at no matter how hard it may be if they did well they were such up and down good fellows and such real friends to us that we should have grudged them nothing as for Jeannie she was almost out of her mind with eagerness to get back the Melbourne and away from the diggings she was afraid of many of the people she saw and didn't like others she was terrified all the time Jim was away from her but she would not hear of living at the prospector's arms with her sister I know where that sort of thing leads to she said let us have our own home however rough Kate went out to specimen gully to see her sister pretty often and they sat and talked and laughed just as they did in old times Jeannie said she was a simple little thing and her heart was as pure as quartz crystal I do really believe she was no match for Kate in any way so the days went on I didn't dare stay away from the prospector's arms for fear she think I wanted to break with her all together and I was never all together comfortable in her company it wasn't her fault for she laid herself out to get round us all even old Arizona bill who used to sit solemnly smoking looking like an Indian chief or a graven image until at last his brick-colored grizzled old face would break up all of a sudden and he laughed like a youngster as the days drew my Christmas I could see a restless expression in her face that I never saw before her eyes began to shine in a strange way and sometimes she'd break off short in her talk and run out of the room then she'd pretend to wish we were gone and that she'd never seen us again I could hardly tell what to make of her and many a time I wished we were on blue water and clear away from all chance of delay and drawback end of chapter 29 recording by Mike Harris