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

“I have heard it asserted,” he says, “that a slight flavour of monotony occasionally assails the honeymoon. Variety is the salt of life, I begin to think. Some of these fine days, Maddie, we’ll both get married and compare notes.”

“You’ll have to look out, then,” says Bella. “All the girls about here are getting snapped up quick. There’s such a lot of young bankers, Government officers, and swells of all sorts about the diggings now, not to reckon the golden-hole men, that we girls have double the pull we had before the gold. Why, there was my old schoolmate, Clara Mason, was married last week to such a fine young chap, a surveyor. She’d only known him six weeks.”

“Well, I’ll come and dance at your wedding if you’ll send me an invite,” says Starlight.

“Will you, though?” she said. “Wouldn’t it be fun? Unless Sir Ferdinand was there. He’s a great friend of mine, you know.”

“I’ll come if his Satanic Majesty himself was present (he occasionally does attend a wedding, I’ve heard), and bring you a present, too, Bella; mind, it’s a bargain.”

“There’s my hand on it,” says she. “I wonder how you’ll manage it, but I’ll leave that to you. It mightn’t be so long either. And now it’s time for us all to go to bed. Jim’s asleep, I believe, this half hour.”

This bit of a barney, of course, made bad blood betwixt us and Moran’s mob, so for a spell Starlight and father thought it handier for us to go our own road and let them go theirs. We never could agree with chaps like them, and that was the long and short of it. They were a deal too rough and ready for Starlight; and as for Jim and me, though we were none too good, we couldn’t do some of the things these coves was up to, nor stand by and see ’em done, which was more. This time we made up our mind to go back to the Hollow and drop out of notice altogether for a bit, and take a rest like.

We hadn’t heard anything of Aileen and the old mother for weeks and weeks, so we fixed it that we should sneak over to Rocky Flat, one at a time, and see how things were going, and hearten ’em up a bit. When we did get to the Hollow, instead of being able to take it easy, as we expected, we found things had gone wrong as far as the devil could send ’em that way if he tried his best. It seems father had taken a restless fit himself, and after we were gone had crossed Nulla Mountain to some place above Rocky Flat, to where he could see what went on with a strong glass.

Before I go further I might as well tell you that, along with the whacking big reward that was offered for all of us, a good many coves as fancied themselves a bit had turned amateur policemen, and had all kinds of plans and dodges for catching us dead or alive. Now, men that take to the bush like us don’t mind the regular paid force much, or bear them any malice. It’s their duty to catch us or shoot us if we bolt, and ours to take all sorts of good care that they shan’t do either if we can help it.

Well, as I was sayin’, we don’t have it in for the regulars in the police; it’s all fair pulling, “pull devil pull baker,” someone has to get the worst of it. Now it’s us, now it’s them, that gets took or rubbed out, and no more about it.

But what us cross coves can’t stand and are mostly sure to turn nasty on is the notion of fellows going into the manhunting trade, with us for game, either for the fun of it or for the reward. That reward means the money paid for our blood. We don’t like it. It may seem curious, but we don’t; and them as take up the line as a game to make money or fun out of, when they’ve no call to, find out their mistake, sometimes when it’s a deal too late.

Now we’d heard that a party of four men⁠—some of them had been gaol warders and some hadn’t⁠—had made it up to follow us up and get us one way or the other if it was to be done. They weren’t in the police, but they thought they knew quite as much as the police did; and, besides, the reward, £5,000, if they got our lot and any one of the others, was no foolish money.

Well, nothing would knock it out of these chaps’ heads but that we were safe to be grabbed in the long run trying to make into the old home. This was what made them gammon to be surveyors when they first came, as we heard about, and go measuring and tape-lining about, when there wasn’t a child over eight years old on the whole creek that couldn’t have told with half an eye they wasn’t nothing of the sort.

Well, as bad luck would have it, just as father was getting down towards the place he meets Moran and Daly, who were making over to the Fish River on a cattle-duffing lay of their own. They were pretty hard up; and Moran after his rough and tumble with Jim, in which he had come off second best, was ready for anything⁠—anything that was bad, that is.

After he’d a long yarn with them about cattle and horses and whatnot, he offered them a ten-pound note each if they’d do what he told them. Dad always carried money about with him; he said it came in handy. If the police didn’t take him, they wouldn’t get it; and if they did take him, why, nothing would matter much and it might go with the rest.