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

part to cut us all dead, beginning with your father, I shouldn’t like to say.”

Aileen looked at him, surprised and angry like for a second. Then she says⁠—

“Captain Starlight, it’s too late now; but words can never tell how I hate and despise the whole thing. My love for Dick got the better of my reason for a bit, but I could⁠—Why, how pale you look!”

He was growing pale, and no mistake. He had been ill for a bit before he left Berrima, though he wouldn’t give in, and the ride was rather too much for him, I suppose. Anyhow, down he tumbles in a dead faint. Aileen rushed over and lifted up his head. I got some water and dabbed it over him. After a bit he came to. He raises himself on his elbows and looks at Aileen. Then he smiles quietly and says⁠—

“I’m quite ashamed of myself. I’m growing as delicate as a young lady. I hope I haven’t given you much trouble.”

When he got up and walked to the verandah he quite staggered, showing he was that weak as he could hardly walk without help.

“I shall be all right,” he said, “after a week’s riding again.”

“And where are you going when you leave this place?” she asked. “Surely you and my brothers never can live in New South Wales after all that has passed.”

“We must try, at all events, Miss Marston,” Starlight answered, raising up his head and looking proud. “You will hear something of us before long.”

We made out that there was no great chance of our being run into at the old place. Father went on first with Crib. He was sure to give warning in some way, best known to father himself, if there was anyone about that wasn’t the right sort. So we went up and went in.

Mother was inside. I thought it was queer that she didn’t come outside. She was always quick enough about that when we came home before, day or night. When I went in I could see, when she got up from her chair, that she was weak, and looked as if she’d been ill. She looked ever so much older, and her hair was a lot grayer than it used to be.

She held out her arms and clung round my neck as if I’d been raised from the dead. So I was in a kind of a way. But she didn’t say much, or ask what I was going to do next. Poor soul! she knew it couldn’t be much good anyway; and that if we were hunted before, we’d be worse hunted now. Those that hadn’t heard of our little game with the Momberah cattle would hear of our getting out of Berrima Gaol, which wasn’t done every day.

We hadn’t a deal of time to spare, because we meant to start off for the Hollow that afternoon, and get there some time in the night, even if it was late. Jim and dad knew the way in almost blindfold. Once we got there we could sleep for a week if we liked, and take it easy all roads. So father told mother and Aileen straight that we’d come for a good comfortable meal and a rest, and we must be off again.

“Oh! father, can’t Dick and Jim stop for a day?” cries out Aileen. “It does seem so hard when we haven’t seen Dick for such a while; and he shut up too all the time.”

“D’ye want to have us all took the same as last time?” growls father. “Women’s never contented as I can see. For two pins I wouldn’t have brought them this way at all. I don’t want to be making roads from this old crib to the Hollow, only I thought you’d like one look at Dick.”

“We must do what’s best, of course,” said poor Aileen; “but it’s hard⁠—very hard on us. It’s mother I’m thinking of, you know. If you knew how she always wakes up in the night, and calls for Dick, and cries when she wakes up, you’d try to comfort her a bit more, father.”

“Comfort her!” says dad; “why, what can I do? Don’t I tell you if we stay about here we’re shopped as safe as anything ever was? Will that comfort her, or you either? We’re safe today because I’ve got telegraphs on the outside that the police can’t pass without ringing the bell⁠—in a way of speaking. But you see tomorrow there’ll be more than one lot here, and I want to be clean away before they come.”

“You know best,” says Aileen; “but suppose they come here tomorrow morning at daylight, as they did last time, and bring a black tracker with them, won’t he be able to follow up your track when you go away tonight?”

“No, he won’t; for this reason, we shall all ride different ways as soon as we leave here. A good while before we get near the place where we all meet we shall find Warrigal on the lookout. He can take the Captain in by another track, and there’ll be only Jim and I and the old dog, the only three persons that’ll go in the near way.”

“And when shall we see⁠—see⁠—any of you again?”

“Somewheres about a month, I suppose, if we’ve luck. There’s a deal belongs to that. You’d better go and see what there is for us to eat. We’ve a long way and a rough way to go before we get to the Hollow.”

Aileen was off at this, and then she set to work and laid a clean tablecloth in the sitting-room and set us down our meal⁠—breakfast, or whatever it was. It wasn’t so bad⁠—corned beef, first-rate potatoes, fresh damper, milk, butter, eggs. Tea, of course, it’s the great drink in the bush; and although some doctors say it’s no good, what would bushmen do without it?

We had no intention of stopping the whole night, though we were tempted to do so⁠—to have one