Robbery Under Arms by Rolf Boldrewood (epub read online books TXT) 📕

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 him. Next to the Commissioner and the P.M., the Inspector of Police is the biggest man in a country town or on a goldfield. He has a tremendous lot of power, and, inside of the law, can do pretty much what he pleases. He can arrest a man on suspicion and keep him in gaol 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, and orderly troopers 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—ahem!⁠—bad characters, and with bushrangers and people of that sort, but nothing more than any young fellow of spirit would like mixed up with his work. Very often they’re 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 Morringer was a real baronet and had been an officer in the Guards, you may guess how the flood of goldfields’ talk rose and flowed and foamed all round him. It was Sir Ferdinand this and Sir Ferdinand that wherever you 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 Bank of New Holland. They’d met abroad. He was a tall, fine-looking man. Not at all, only middle-sized; hadn’t old Major Trenck, the superintendent of police, when he came to enlist and said he had been in the Guards, growled out, “Too short for the Guards!”

“But I was not a private,” replied Sir Ferdinand.

“Well, anyhow there’s a something about him. Nobody can deny he looks like a gentleman; my word, he’ll put some of these Weddin Mountain chaps thro’ their facin’s, you’ll see,” says one miner.

“Not he,” says another; “not if he was ten baronites in one; all the same, he’s a manly-looking chap and shows blood.”

This was the sort of talk we used to hear all round us⁠—from the miners, from the storekeepers, from the mixed mob at the Prospectors’ Arms, in the big room at night, and generally all about. We said nothing, and 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—we’d been washing up⁠—when we saw one of the camp gentlemen come in, and a strange officer of police with him. A sort of whisper ran through the room, and everybody made up their minds it was Sir Ferdinand. Jim and I both looked at him.

“Wa-al!” said one of our Yankee friends, “what ’yur twistin’ your necks at like a flock of geese in a corn patch? How d’ye fix it that a lord’s better’n any other man?”

“He’s a bit different, somehow,” I says. “We’re not goin’ to kneel down or knuckle under to him, but he don’t look like anyone else in this room, does he?”

“He’s no slouch, and he looks yer square and full in the eye, like a hunter,” says Arizona Bill; “but durn my old buckskins if I can see why you Britishers sets up idols and such and worship ’em, in a colony, jest’s if yer was in that benighted old England again.”

We didn’t say any more. Jim lit his pipe and smoked away, thinking, perhaps, more whether Sir Ferdinand was anything of a revolver shot, and if he was likely to hit him (Jim) at forty or fifty yards, in case such a chance should turn up, than about the difference of rank and such things.

While we were talking we saw Starlight and one of the Honourables come in and sit down close by Sir Ferdinand, who was taking his grog at a small table, and smoking a big cigar. The Honourable and he jumps up at once and shook hands in such a hurry so as we knew they’d met before. Then the Honourable introduces Starlight to Sir Ferdinand. We felt too queer to laugh, Jim and I, else we should have dropped off our seats when Starlight bowed as 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.

We couldn’t help sniggerin’ a bit at this, ’specially when Arizona Bill said, “Thar’s another durned fool of a Britisher; look at his eyeglass! I wonder the field has not shaken some of that cussed foolishness out of him by this time.”

XXXI

Jim and his