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

or banks or stations being robbed. All the time Burke and Daly, Moran, Wall, and Lardner were cruising about the Southern and Western roads, and at all sorts of points between the two, keeping all the police on the move and driving all the squatters and steady-going people wild, as nobody knew whose turn it might be next.

Besides this, a lot of half-bred duffers, something between horse-stealers and bushrangers, used to run out now and again when they saw a good chance, blacken their faces or wear masks, perhaps ride 30 or 40 miles from their own farms, stick up a coach or a traveller that they knew had money, and then back again, and be ploughing or milking next day just as peaceable and honest-looking as you please. Every now and then these fellows would be caught, and recognised very simple too. Some of them had stopped and robbed some Chinamen coming from a goldfield. One fellow held a pistol to their heads, while his mate searched them. John didn’t say much, but those cross-eyes of theirs were reckoning up the chap pretty sharp and quiet.

Next day the head man goes to the police inspector and gives him as good description as he could, considering they both wore masks, finishing up with “that piecee man holdim pistol lide ’em horse welly big bit.” Here John put his fingers into his own opium-trap.

“By George,” says the inspector to the sergeant, “that must be Johnny Dickson. Where was it we noticed a chap with a curb-bit last week? He must have got it for nothing, too; for none of these snaffle-dragging natives would ever waste money in buying a double bridle.”

Just as he spoke down comes the very fellow, riding along to a pound sale, looking as respectable and innocent as if he was going to buy seed potatoes, and never had a notion outside of his cultivation paddock. Out walks the sergeant, and beckons to him.

“Come here, Johnny. Have you seen a gray horse down your way? That’s a fine strong bit you’ve got⁠—does your horse pull hard?”

The Chinaman shows himself then, and Johnny begins to look rather mixed.

“That piecee man lob me, lob Ah Sing, lob Ah You, one piecee day; allee same bit, all same blidle. You see em,” yells John. “You catchee him, sarjin; him wellee bad man, lobbee like hellee.”

“Better come in, Johnny, and talk it over,” says the sergeant, keeping a friendly hold of his bridle-rein. “Very likely there’s nothing in it. But we’ll have to search you.”

Johnny would have made a bolt if he could, and have knocked Ah Mow’s brains out with the stirrup-iron; but it was no go. There were two revolvers dead on him before he could draw, and as some of the Chinaman’s money was on him, and a gold ring or two which he was fool enough to carry, he was committed for trial, found guilty at the Circuit Court, and got l5 years. His mate was never caught, though the police knew pretty well who he was; but there wasn’t evidence enough against him. He wasn’t fool enough to ride to those sort of picnics with a bridle that any child could swear to half a mile off.

Every now and then a few of the “offside drivers,” as the natives called them, would be collared by a fluke but in spite of all they could do, all our lot seemed to laugh at the police, while Moran and the rest rode over the whole countryside as if it was their own, and robbed and ravaged from Mudgee to Bathurst, and from Goulburn to Albury, and back again.

Once Moran caught a squatter that he had a down on a good way from his own run, near Albury. He watched him coming down into a crossing-place and sat behind a rock till he was down close. Then he muzzled him, and made him get off his horse.

“Oh! you’re Matson, are ye?” he drawls out. “So you’ve been pounding the Piney Range boys’ horses, have yer?” (These were a lot of horse-stealers, mates of Moran’s, and old pals.) “Now, if you do that again, I’ll shoot yer, d’ye hear? D⁠⸺⁠n yer, I’ve more than half a mind to shoot yer now. I think I will, too.”

Then he took out his revolver and cocked it. Mr. Matson didn’t feel happy, I daresay, before a fellow that would rather shoot a man than not. Moran looks at him for four or five minutes, and then drawls, “I’ll not shoot yer today; but by ⸻, if ever you pound one of them chaps’ horses I’ll ride five hundred miles to do it. You can go now. Hallo! Stop a bit. I’ve heard you’re an out-and-out stepdancer. Just you take a turn on that bit of grass there, and don’t you slum it, for I’m a judge.”

When the others came back, Daly and them, there was Moran sitting on a log smoking, and his revolver by him, and Matson dancing away like a mad monkey, the perspiration rolling down his cheeks, and his eyes starting out of his head.

They persuaded Moran to cut the show short, and Mr. Matson was never so glad to get clear away from any little party in his life.

Once they were rather sold. I used to chaff Moran about it when we met, and it always made him that savage he’d have shot me if he dared. Four of them were mooching about a public-house on the Southern road, not far from Murrumburrah, when they saw a buggy coming quietly along from the valley below. They heard that a gentleman was coming past that day, a big station-owner down the river, and they meant to make a haul out of him.

Now, this Mr. M’Crae was a man that had a great objection to being interfered with; besides that, he wasn’t a likely man to go out of his way for anybody, gentle or simple. He’d heard about these chaps being somewhere about his