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

end⁠—a wasted life, a felon’s doom! Quite melodramatic, isn’t it, Richard? Well, we’ll play out the last act with spirit. ‘Enter first robber,’ and so on. Good night.”

He walked away. I never heard him say so much about himself before. It set me thinking of what luck and chance there seemed to be in this world. How men were not let do what they knew was best for ’em⁠—often and often⁠—but something seemed to drive ’em farther and farther along the wrong road, like a lot of stray wild cattle that wants to make back to their own run, and a dog here, a fence the other way. A man on foot or a flock of sheep always keeps frightening ’em farther and farther from the old beat till they get back into a bit of back country or mallee scrub and stop there for good. Cattle and horses and men and women are awful like one another in their ways, and the more you watch ’em the more it strikes you.

Another day or two idling and card-playing, another headache after too much grog at night, brought us to a regular go in about business, and then we fixed it for good.

We were to stick up the next monthly gold escort. That was all. We knew it would be a heavy one and trusted to our luck to get clear off with the gold, and then take a ship for Honolulu or San Francisco. A desperate chance; but we were desperate men. We had tried to work hard and honest. We had done so for best part of a year. No one could say we had taken the value of a halfpenny from any man. And yet we were not let stay right when we asked for nothing but to be let alone and live out the rest of our lives like men.

They wouldn’t have us that way, and now they must take us across the grain, and see what they would gain by that. So it happened we went out one day with Warrigal to show us the way, and after riding for hours and hours, we came to a thick scrub. We rode through it till we came to an old cattle track. We followed that till we came to a tumble-down slab hut with a stockyard beside it. The yard had been mended, and the rails were up. Seven or eight horses were inside, all in good condition. As many men were sitting or standing about smoking outside the old hut.

When we rode up they all came forward and we had it out. We knew who was coming, and were ready for ’em. There was Moran, of course, quiet and savage-looking, just as like a black snake as ever twisting about with his deadly glittering eyes, wanting to bite someone. There was Daly and Burke, Wall and Hulbert, and two or three more⁠—I won’t say who they were now⁠—and if you please who should come out of the hut last but Master Billy the Boy, as impudent as you like, with a pipe in his mouth, and a revolver in his belt, trying to copy Moran and Daly. I felt sorry when I see him, and thought what he’d gradually come to bit by bit, and where he’d most likely end, all along of the first money he had from father for telegraphing. But after all I’ve a notion that men and women grow up as they are intended to from the beginning. All the same as a tree from seed. You may twist it this road or that, make it a bit bigger or smaller according to the soil or the way it’s pruned and cut down when it’s young, but you won’t alter the nature of that tree or the fruit that it bears. You won’t turn a five-corner into a quince, or a geebung into an orange, twist and twine, and dig and water as you like. So whichever way Billy the Boy had been broken and named he’d have bolted and run off the course. Take a pet dingo now. He might look very tame, and follow them that feed him, and stand the chain; but as soon as anything passed close that he could kill, he’d have his teeth into it and be lapping its blood before you could say knife, and the older he got the worse he’d be.

“Well, Dick,” says this young limb of Satan, “so you’ve took to the Queen’s highway agin, as the chap says in the play. I thought you and Jim was a-going to jine the Methodies or the Sons of Temperance at Turon, you both got to look so thunderin’ square on it. Poor old Jim looks dreadful down in the mouth, don’t he, though?”

“It would be all the better for you if you’d joined some other body, you young scamp,” I said. “Who told you to come here? I’ve half a mind to belt you home again to your mother;” and I walked towards him.

“No, you won’t, Dick Marston, don’t you make any mistake,” says the young bull-pup, looking nasty. “I’m as good a man as you, with this little tool.” Here he pulled out his revolver. “I’ve as much right to turn out as you have. What odds is it to you what I do?”

I looked rather foolish at this, and Moran and Burke began to laugh.

“You’d better set up a night-school, Dick,” says Burke, “and get Billy and some of the other flash kiddies to come. They might turn over a new leaf in time.”

“If you’ll stand up, or Moran there, that’s grinning behind you, I’ll make some of ye laugh on the wrong side,” I said.

“Come on,” drawls Moran, taking off his coat, and walking up; “I’d like to have a smack at you before you go into the Church.”

We should have been at it hammer and tongs⁠—we both hated one another like poison⁠—only the others interfered, and Billy said we