"He can"t do it," says dad; "it"s sink or swim with the lot of you.
And he dursn"t either, not he," says father, beginning to growl out his words. "If I ever heard he"d given away any one in the lot I"d have his life, if I had to poleaxe him in George Street. He knows me too."
We sat yarning away pretty late. The old man didn"t say it, but I made out that he was sorry enough for that part of his life which had turned out so bad for us boys, and for mother and Aileen. Bad enough he was in a kind of way, old dad, but he wasn"t all bad, and I believe if he could have begun again and thought of what misery he was going to bring on the lot of us he would never have gone on the cross. It was too late, too late now, though, to think of that.
Towards morning I heard the old dog growl, and then the tramp of a horse"s feet. Starlight rode up to the fire and let his horse go, then walked straight into his corner and threw himself down without speaking.
He had had a precious long ride, and a fast one by the look of his horse. The other one he had let go as soon as he came into the Hollow; but none of the three would be a bit the worse after a few hours" rest.
The horses, of course, were spare ones, and not wanted again for a bit.
Next morning it was "sharp"s the word", and no mistake. I felt a deal smarter on it than yesterday. When you"ve fairly started for the road half the journey"s done. It"s the thinking of this and forgetting that, and wondering whether you haven"t left behind the t"other thing, that"s the miserablest part of going a journey; when you"re once away, no matter what"s left behind, you can get on some way or other.
We didn"t start so over and above early, though Starlight was up as fresh as paint at sunrise, you"d thought he hadn"t ridden a yard the day before. Even at the very last there"s a lot of things to do and to get.
But we all looked slippy and didn"t talk much, so that we got through what we had to do, and had all the horses saddled and packed by about eight o"clock. Even Warrigal had partly got over his temper. Of course I told Starlight about it. He gave him a good rowing, and told him he deserved another hammering, which he had a good mind to give him, if we hadn"t been starting for a journey. Warrigal didn"t say a word to him.
He never did. Starlight told me on the quiet, though, he was sorry it happened, "though it"s the rascal"s own fault, and served him right.
But he"s a revengeful beggar," he says, "and that he would play you some dog"s trick if he wasn"t afraid of me, you may depend your life on."
"Now," says he, "we must make our little arrangements. I shall be somewhere about Cunnamulla by the end of this month" (it was only the first week). "Jim knows that we are to meet there, and if we manage that all right I think the greatest part of the danger will be over. I shall get right across by Dandaloo to the back blocks of the West Bogan country, between it and the Lachlan. There are tracks through the endless mallee scrub, only known to the tribes in the neighbourhood, and a few half-castes like Warrigal, that have been stock-riding about them.
Sir Ferdinand and his troopers might just as well hunt for a stray Arab in the deserts of the Euphrates. If I"m alive--mind you, alive--I"ll be at Cunnamulla on the day I mean. And now, good-bye, old fellow. Whatever my sins have been, I"ve been true to you and your people in the past, and if Aileen and I meet across the seas, as I hope, the new life may partly atone for the old one."
Chapter 49
He shook hands with me and dad, threw his leg over Rainbow, took Locket"s bridle as if he was going for an easy day"s ride, and cantered off.
Warrigal nodded to both of us, then brought his pack-horse up level, and followed up.
"There goes the Captain," says father. "It"s hard to say if we"ll ever see him again. I shan"t, anyhow, nor you either, maybe. Somehow I"ve had a notion coming over me this good while as my time ain"t going to be long. It don"t make no odds, neither. Life ain"t no great chop to a man like me, not when he gets the wrong side o" sixty, anyhow. Mine ain"t been such a bad innings, and I don"t owe much to any man. I mean as I"ve mostly been square with them that"s done me a bad turn. No man can say Ben Marston was ever back"ard in that way; and never will be, that"s more. No! them as trod on me felt my teeth some day or other. Eh, old man?" Crib growled. He understood things regular like a Christian, that old dog did. "And now you"re a-goin" off and Jim"s gone--seems only t"other day as you and he was little toddlin" chaps, runnin" to meet me when I come home from work, clearin" that fust paddock, and telling me mammy had the tea ready. Perhaps I"d better ha" stuck to the grubbin"
and clearin" after all. It looked slow work, but it paid better than this here in the long run." Father turns away from me then, and walks back a step or two. Then he faces me. "Dash it, boy, what are ye waitin"
for? Shake hands, and tell Jim the old man han"t forgot him yet."
It was many a day since I"d felt father"s hand in kindness; he didn"t do them sort of things. I held out mine and his fingers closed on it one minute, like a vice--blest if I didn"t expect to feel the bones grate agin one another; he was that strong he hardly knew his own strength, I believe. Then he sits down on the log by the fire. He took out his pipe, but somehow it wouldn"t light. "Good-bye, Crib," says I. The old dog looked at me for a bit, wagged his tail, and then went and sat between dad"s knees. I took my horse and rode away slowish. I felt all dead and alive like when I got near the turn in the track. I looked back and seen the dog and him just the same. I started both horses then. I never set eyes on him again. Poor old dad!
I wasn"t very gay for a bit, but I had a good horse under me, another alongside, a smartish lot of cash in notes and gold, some bank deposits too, and all the world before me. My dart now was to make my way to Willaroon and look sharp about it. My chance of getting through was none too good, but I settled to ride a deal at night and camp by day. I began to pick up my spirits after I got on the road that led up the mountain, and to look ahead to the time when I might call myself my own man again.
Next day after that I was at Willaroon. I could have got there overnight, but it looked better to camp near the place and come next morning. There I was all right. The overseer was a reasonable sort of man, and I found old George had been as good as his word, and left word if a couple of men like me and Starlight came up we were to be put on with the next mob of cattle that were going to Queensland. He did a store cattle trade with the far-out squatters that were stocking up new country in Queensland, and it paid him very well, as nearly everything did that he touched. We were to find our own horses and be paid so much a week--three pounds, I think--and so on.
As luck would have it, there was a biggish mob to start in a week, and road hands being scarce in that part the overseer was disappointed that my mate, as he called him, hadn"t come on, but I said he"d gone another track.
"Well, he"ll hardly get such wages at any other job," says he, "and if I was Mr. Storefield I wouldn"t hire him again, not if he wanted a billet ever so bad."
"I don"t suppose he will," says I, "and serves him quite right too."
I put my horses in the paddock--there was wild oats and crowsfoot knee-high in it--and helped the overseer to muster and draft. He gave me a fresh horse, of course. When he saw how handy I was in the yard he got quite shook on me, and, says he--
"By George, you"re just the chap the boss wants to send out to some new country he"s going to take up in Queensland. What"s your name? Now I think of it he didn"t tell me."
"William Turner," says I.
"Very well, William," says he, "you"re a dashed good man, I can see, and I wish I could pick up a few more like you. Blessed if I ever saw such a lot of duffers in my life as there are on this side. I"ve hardly seen a man come by that"s worth his grub. You couldn"t stop till the next mob starts, I suppose? I"d make it worth your while."
"I couldn"t well this time," says I; "my mate"s got a friend out north just from home, and we"re tied to time to meet him. But if I come back this way I"ll put in a year with you."
"Well, an offer"s an offer," says he. "I can"t say more, but I think you"ll do better by stopping on here."
I got away with the cattle all right, and the drover in charge was told to do all he could for me. The overseer said I was as good as two men, and it was "Bill" here and "William" there all the time till we were off. I wasn"t sorry to be clear away, for of course any day a trooper might have ridden up and asked questions about the horses, that were a little too good for a working drover.
Besides, I"d had a look at the papers, and I saw that Starlight had been as good as his word, in the matter of the advertis.e.m.e.nt. Sure enough, the "Turon Star" and a lot of other papers had, on the same day, received the same advertis.e.m.e.nt, with a pound note enclosed, and instructions to insert it four times.
NOTICE.
To all whom it may concern.
The Messrs. Marston Brothers and Co., being about to leave the district, request that all accounts against them may be sent to the Police Camp, Turon, addressed to the care of Sir Ferdinand Morringer, whose receipt will be a sufficient discharge.
For the firm, Starlight.
I couldn"t have believed at first that he"d be so mad. But after a bit I saw that, like a lot of his reckless doings, it wasn"t so far out after all.
All the papers had taken it up as usual, and though some of them were pretty wild at the insult offered to the Government and so on, I could see they"d most of them come to think it was a blind of some sort, meant to cover a regular big touch that we were going in for, close by home, and wanting to throw the police off the scent once more. If we"d really wanted to make tracks, they said, this would be the last thing we"d think of doing. Bit by bit it was put about as there should be a carefully laid plot to stick up all the banks in Turon on the same day, and make a sweep of all the gold and cash.
I laughed when I saw this, because I knew that it was agreed upon between Aileen and Gracey that, about the time we were fairly started, whichever of them saw Sir Ferdinand first should allow it to be fished out of her, as a great secret, that we were working up to some tremendous big affair of this sort, and which was to put the crown on all our other doings. To make dead sure, we had sent word to Billy the Boy (and some money too) to raise a sham kind of sticking-up racket on the other side of the Turon, towards Bathurst way. He was to frighten a few small people that would be safe to talk about it, and make out that all the bush-rangers in the country were camped about there. This was the sort of work that the young villain regularly went in for and took a pleasure in, and by the way the papers put it in he had managed to frighten a lot of travellers and roadside publicans out of their senses most.
As luck would have it, Wall and Hulbert and Moran had been working up towards Mudgee lately and stuck up the mail, and as Master Billy thought it a great lark to ride about with them with a black mask on, people began to think the gangs had joined again and that some big thing, they didn"t know what, was really on the cards. So a lot of police were telegraphed for, and the Bathurst superintendent came down, all in a hurry, to the Turon, and in the papers nothing went down but telegrams and yarns about bush-rangers. They didn"t know what the country was coming to; all the sober going people wishing they"d never got an ounce of gold in Australia, and every little storekeeper along the line that had 100 Pounds in his cash-box hiding it every night and afraid of seeing us ride up every time the dogs barked.
All the time we were heading for Cunnamulla, and leaving New South Wales behind us hand over hand.
The cattle, of course, couldn"t travel very fast; ten or twelve miles a day was enough for them. I could have drowned myself in the creeks as we went crawling along sometimes, and I that impatient to get forward.
Eighty miles it was from Cunnamulla to the Queensland border. Once we were over that we"d have to be arrested on warrant, and there were lots of chaps, like us, that were "wanted", on the far-out north stations.
Once we sighted the waters of the Warrego we should feel ourselves more than half free.
Then there was Jim, poor old Jim! He wrote to say he was just starting for Melbourne, and very queer he felt about leaving his wife and boy.
Such a fine little chap as he"d grown too. He"d just got his head down, he said, and taken to the pulling (he meant working) like our old near-side poler, and he was as happy as a king, going home to Jeanie at night, and having his three pounds every Sat.u.r.day. Now he was going away ever so far by land and sea, and G.o.d knows when he might see either of "em again. If it wasn"t for the fear he had of being pitched upon by the police any day, and the long sentence he was sure to get, he"d stay where he was. He wasn"t sure whether he wouldn"t do so now.
After that Aileen had a letter, a short one, from Jeanie. Jim had gone.
She had persuaded him for the sake of the boy, though both their hearts were nearly broken. She didn"t know whether she"d done right. Perhaps she never might see him again. The poor fellow had forfeited his coach fare once, and come back to stay another day with her. When he did go he looked the picture of misery, and something told her it was their last parting.
Well, we struck the river about ten miles this side of Cunnamulla, where there was a roadside inn, a small, miserable kind of place, just one of those half-shanties, half-public-houses, fit for nothing but to trap bushmen, and where the bad grog kills more men in a year than a middling break-out of fever.
Somewhere about here I expected to hear of the other two. We"d settled to meet a few miles one side or the other of the township. It didn"t much matter which. So I began to look about in case I might get word of either of "em, even if they didn"t turn up to the time.
Somewhere about dinner time (twelve o"clock) we got the cattle on to the river and let "em spread over the flat. Then the man in charge rode up to the inn, the Traveller"s Rest, a pretty long rest for some of "em (as a grave here and there with four panels of shickery two-rail fence round it showed), and shouted n.o.bblers round for us.
While we was standing up at the bar, waiting for the cove to serve it out, a flash-looking card he was, and didn"t hurry himself, up rides a tall man to the door, hangs up his horse, and walks in. He had on a regular town rig--watch and chain, leather valise, round felt hat, like a chap going to take charge of a store or something. I didn"t know him at first, but directly our eyes met I saw it was old Jim. We didn"t talk--no fear, and my boss asked him to join us, like any other stranger. Just then in comes the landlady to sharpen up the man at the bar.