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

night’s rest in the old place where we used to sleep so sound before. It was no good thinking of anything of that kind, anyhow, for a good while to come. What we’d got to do was to look out sharp and not be caught simple again like we was both last time.

After we had our tea we sat outside the verandah, and tried to make the best of it. Jim stayed inside with mother for a good while; she didn’t leave her chair much now, and sat knitting by the hour together. There was a great change come over her lately. She didn’t seem to be afraid of our getting caught as she used to be, nor half as glad or sorry about anything. It seemed like as if she’d made up her mind that everything was as bad as it could be, and past mending. So it was; she was right enough there. The only one who was in real good heart and spirits was Starlight. He’d come round again, and talked and rattled away, and made Aileen and Jim and me laugh, in spite of everything. He said we had all fine times before us now for a year or two, any way. That was a good long time. After that anything might happen. What it would be he neither knew nor cared. Life was made up of short bits; sometimes it was hard luck; sometimes everything went jolly and well. We’d got our liberty again, our horses, and a place to go to, where all the police in the country would never find us. He was going in for a short life and a merry one. He, for one, was tired of small adventures, and he was determined to make the name of Starlight a little more famous before very long. If Dick and Jim would take his advice⁠—the advice of a desperate, ill-fated outcast, but still staunch to his friends⁠—they would clear out, and leave him to sink or swim alone, or with such associates as he might pick up, whose destination would be no great matter whatever befell them. They could go into hiding for a while⁠—make for Queensland and then go into the northern territory. There was new country enough there to hide all the fellows that were wanted in New South Wales.

“But why don’t you take your own advice?” said Aileen, looking over at Starlight as he sat there quite careless and comfortable-looking, as if he’d no call to trouble his head about anything. “Isn’t your life worth mending or saving? Why keep on this reckless miserable career which you yourself expect to end ill?”

“If you ask me, Miss Marston,” he said, “whether my life⁠—what is left of it⁠—is worth saving, I must distinctly answer that it is not. It is like the last coin or two in the gambler’s purse, not worth troubling one’s head about. It must be flung on the board with the rest. It might land a reasonable stake. But as to economising and arranging details that would surely be the greatest folly of all.”

I heard Aileen sigh to herself. She said nothing for a while; and then old Crib began to growl. He got up and walked along the track that led up the hill. Father stood up, too, and listened. We all did except Starlight, who appeared to think it was too much trouble, and never moved or seemed to notice.

Presently the dog came walking slowly back, and coiled himself up again close to Starlight, as if he had made up his mind it didn’t matter. We could hear a horse coming along at a pretty good bat over the hard, rocky, gravelly road. We could tell it was a single horse, and more than that, a barefooted one, coming at a hand-gallop up hill and down dale in a careless kind of manner. This wasn’t likely to be a police trooper. One man wouldn’t come by himself to a place like ours at night; and no trooper, if he did come, would clatter along a hard track, making row enough to be heard more than a mile off on a quiet night.

“It’s all right,” says father. “The old dog knowed him; it’s Billy the Boy. There’s something up.”

Just as he spoke we saw a horseman come in sight; and he rattled down the stony track as hard as he could lick. He pulled up just opposite the house, close by where we were standing. It was a boy about fifteen, dressed in a ragged pair of moleskin trousers, a good deal too large for him, but kept straight by a leather strap round the waist. An old cabbage-tree hat and a blue serge shirt made up the rest of his rig. Boots he had on, but they didn’t seem to be fellows, and one rusty spur. His hair was like a hay-coloured mop, half-hanging over his eyes, which looked sharp enough to see through a gum tree and out at the other side.

He jumped down and stood before us, while his horse’s flanks heaved up and down like a pair of bellows.

“Well, what’s up?” says father.

“My word, governor, you was all in great luck as I come home last night, after bein’ away with them cattle to pound. Bobby, he don’t know a p’leeceman from a wood-an’-water joey; he’d never have dropped they was comin’ here unless they’d pasted up a notice on the door.”

“How did you find out, Billy?” says father, “and when’ll they be here?”

“Fust thing in the morning,” says the young wit, grinning all over his face. “Won’t they be jolly well sold when they rides up and plants by the yard, same as they did last time, when they took Dick.”

“Which ones was they?” asks father, fillin’ his pipe quite businesslike, just as if he’d got days to spare.

“Them two fellers from Bargo; one of ’em’s a new chum⁠—got his hair cut short, just like Dick’s. My word, I thought he’d