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

ride by than the moon throws. Jim and I sometimes rode on one side and sometimes the other; but there was old Rainbow always in the lead, playing with his bit and arching his neck, and going with Aileen’s light weight on him as if he could go on all night at the same pace and think nothing of it; and I believe he could.

When we got home dad was grumpy, and wondered what we wanted riding the horses about when there was nothing to do and nothing to see. But Warrigal had made him a pot of tea, and he was able to smoke now; so he wasn’t so bad after all. We made ourselves pretty comfortable⁠—Aileen said she’d got a good appetite, for a wonder⁠—and we sat chatting round the fire and talking away quite like old days till the moon was pretty high.

Father didn’t get well all at once. He went back twice because he would try to do too much, and wouldn’t be said by Starlight or Aileen either when he took a thing into his head; then he’d have to be nursed and looked after day and night again just the same as ever. So it took near a month before he was regularly on his pins again, and going about as he did before he was hit. His right arm was a bit stiff, too; it used to pain and make him swear awful now and again. Anyhow, Aileen made us that comfortable and happy while she was there, we didn’t care how long he took getting well.

Those were out and out the pleasantest days we ever spent in the Hollow⁠—the best time almost Jim and I had had since we were boys. Nearly every day we rode out in the afternoon, and there wasn’t a hole or corner, a spring or a creek inside the walls of the old Hollow that we didn’t show Aileen. She was that sort of girl she took an interest in everything; she began to know all the horses and cattle as well as we did ourselves. Rainbow was regular given up to her, and the old horse after a bit knew her as well as his master. I never seen a decent horse that didn’t like to have a woman on his back; that is, if she was young and lissom and could ride a bit. They seem to know, in a sort of way. I’ve seen horses that were no chop for a man to ride, and that wouldn’t be particular about bucking you off if the least thing started them, but went as quiet as mice with a girl on their backs.

So Aileen used to make Rainbow walk and amble his best, so that all the rest of us, when she did it for fun, had to jog. Then she’d jump him over logs or the little trickling deep creeks that ran down to the main water; or she’d pretend to have a race and go off full gallop, riding him at his best for a quarter of a mile; then he’d pull up as easy as if he’d never gone out of a walk.

“How strange all this is,” she said one day; “I feel as if I were living on an island. It’s quite like playing at Robinson Crusoe, only there’s no sea. We don’t seem to be able to get out all the same. It’s a happy, peaceful life, too. Why can’t we keep on forever like this, and shut out the wicked, sorrowful world altogether?”

“Quite of your opinion, Miss Marston; why should we ever change?” says Starlight, who was sitting down with the rest of us by the side of our biggest river. We had been fishing all the afternoon and done well. “Let us go home no more; I am quite contented. But what about poor Jim? He looks sadder every day.”

“He is fretting for his wife, poor fellow, and I don’t wonder. You are one of those natures that never change, Jim; and if you don’t get away soon, or see some chance of rejoining her, you will die. How you are to do it I don’t know.”

“I am bound to make a try next month,” says Jim. “If I don’t do something towards it I shall go mad.”

“You could not do a wiser thing,” says Starlight, “in one way, or more foolish thing in another. Meantime, why should we not make the best of the pleasant surroundings with which Nature provides us here⁠—green turf, sparkling water, good sport, and how bright a day! Could we be more favoured by Fortune, slippery dame that she is? It is an Australian Decameron without the naughty stories.”

“Do you know, sometimes I really think I am enjoying myself,” said Aileen, half to herself, “and then I feel that it must be a dream. Such dreadful things are waiting for me⁠—for us all.” Then she shuddered and trembled.

She did not know the most dreadful thing of all yet. We had carefully kept it from her. We chanced its not reaching her ears until after she had got home safe and had time to grieve over it all by herself.

We had a kind of feeling somehow that us four might never meet again in the same way, or be able to enjoy one another’s company for a month, without fear of interruption, again, as long as we lived.

So we all made up our minds, in spite of the shadow of evil that would crawl up now and then, to enjoy each other’s company while it lasted, and make the best of it.

Starlight for all that seemed altered like, and every now and then he’d go off with Warrigal and stay away from daylight to dark. When he did come he’d sit for hours with his hands before him and never say a word to anyone. I saw Aileen watch him when he looked like that, not that she ever said anything, but pretended to