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

heard voices and a horse’s tramp on the other side of the river. They seemed not to be sure whether I’d crossed or not, and were tracking up and down on each side of the bar. I breasted the hill track faster than I had done for many a day, and when I got to the top stopped to listen, but could hear nothing. The moon had dropped suddenly; the forest was as black as pitch. You couldn’t see your hand before you.

I knew that I was safe now, if a hundred men were at my heels, till daybreak at any rate. I had the two sides of the gully to guide me. I could manage to make to the farm where the sorrel was at grass with a lot of other diggers’ horses. If I could get a saddle and catch the old horse I could put many a mile between me and them before sundown. I stood still when I reached the top of the bluff, partly to get breath and partly to take a last look at old Turon.

Below lay the goldfield clearly marked out by hundreds of campfires that were still red and showed bright in the darkened sky. The course of the river was marked by them, in and out, as most of the shallow diggings had followed the river flats. Far back the fires glowed against the black forest, and just before the moon fell I could catch the shine of the water in the deeper reaches of the river.

It was the very picture of what I’d read about an army in camp⁠—lines of tents and a crowd of men all spread out over a bit of land hardly big enough for a flock of sheep. Now and then a dog would bark⁠—now a revolver would go off. It was never quiet on Turon diggings, day or night.

Well, there they all were, tents and diggers, claims and windlasses, pumps and waterwheels. I had been happy enough there, God knows; and perhaps I was looking at it all for the last time. As I turned and made down the hill into the black forest that spread below me like the sea, I felt as if I was leaving everything that was any good in life behind with the Turon lights, and being hunted once more, in spite of myself, into a desert of darkness and despair.

XXXIII

I got to Bates’s paddocks about daylight, and went straight up to the hut where the man lived that looked after it. Most of the diggers that cared about their horses paid for their grass in farmers’ and squatters’ paddocks, though the price was pretty high. Old Bates, who had a bit of a good grassed flat, made a pretty fair thing out of it by taking in horses at half-a-crown a week apiece. As luck would have it, the man in charge knew me; he’d seen me out with the Yankees one day, and saw I was a friend with them, and when I said I’d come for Bill’s sorrel he thought it likely enough, and got out the saddle and bridle. I tipped him well, and went off, telling him I was going to Wattle Flat to look at a quartz-crushing plant that was for sale. I accounted for coming up so early by saying I’d lost my road, and that I wanted to get to Wattle Flat sharp, as another chap wished to buy the plant. I cut across the range, kept the sun on my right hand, and pushed on for Jonathan’s. I got there early, and it’s well I did. I rode the sorrel hard, but I knew he was pretty tough, and I was able to pay for him if I killed him. I trusted to leaving him at Jonathan’s, and getting a fresh horse there. What with the walk over the bluff and the forest, having no sleep the night before, and the bother and trouble of it all, I was pretty well used up. I was real glad to see Jonathan’s paddock fence and the old house we’d thought so little of lately. It’s wonderful how soon people rise grand notions and begin to get too big for their boots.

“Hello, Dick, what’s up?” says Jonathan. “No swag, ’lastic-side boots, flyaway tie, new rifle, old horse; looks a bit fishy don’t it?”

“I can’t stop barneying,” I said. “Have you a decent horse to give me? The game’s up. I must ride night and day till I get home. Heard anything?”

“No; but Billy the Boy’s just rode up. I hear him a-talkin’ to the gals. He knows if anybody does. I’ll take the old moke and put him in the paddock. I can let you have a stunner.”

“All right; I’ll go in and have some breakfast. It’s as much as I dare stop at all now.”

“Why, Dick Marston, is that you? No, it can’t be,” said both girls together. “Why, you look like a ghost. He doesn’t; he looks as if he’d been at a ball all night. Plenty of partners, Dick?”

“Never mind, Dick,” says Maddie; “go and make yourself comfortable in that room, and I’ll have breakfast for you while you’d let a cow out of the bail. We don’t forget our friends.”

“If all our friends were as true as you, Maddie,” I said, rather down-like, “I shouldn’t be here today.”

“Oh! that’s it, is it?” says she; “we’re only indebted to somebody’s laying the traps on⁠—a woman of course⁠—for your honour’s company. Never mind, old man, I won’t hit you when you’re down. But, I say, you go and have a yarn with Billy the Boy⁠—he’s in the kitchen. I believe the young imp knows something, but he won’t let on to Bell and I.”

While the steaks were frying⁠—and they smelt very good, bad as I felt⁠—I called out Master Billy and had a talk with him. I handed him a note to begin with. It