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

pity comes in. Mother’s dying fast, and Aileen’s breaking her heart. We ought to do anything in the world if we want to call ourselves men, rather than bring more shame and sorrow on them. It’s hard to knuckle under now that we’ve gone so far and done so much. But I believe Starlight’s in the right of it. The shortest way is to take our punishment. Dad and I, or me alone, and have a clean slate afterwards, there’ll be one to keep the old place straight. Then, after a year or two, I’d learn myself a trade, or something, while I was shopped. Anyhow, it wouldn’t last forever, and then I’d be right, and could stay home day and night, if all the policemen in the country was riding by. The way we’re going now drags us in deeper and deeper. There’s a rope or a bullet at the other end. What do you say, Father?”

Father had been smoking hard all the time while Jim had been talking. When he’d done he got up and flung his pipe down, so that it smashed all to bits. When I saw that I knew what was coming.

“Look here, Jim Marston,” he said, and his face grew that black and savage that it curdled my blood to look at. “If you go and sell yourself to a lagging, because a couple of women cry and whine over what can’t be helped, and what other women have to stand and make the best of, you’re no son of mine. You may go and make yourself a place wherever you like, but into mine you don’t set foot while I live. I mean to fight it out, this thing. If I’m taken into a gaol it’ll be feet foremost. I swore an oath when I left England that I’d make it hot for the cursed gentlefolk that hunted me down⁠—to my dying day⁠—and that oath I’ll keep. If you’re too soft to back up me and your brother, you’d better turn schoolteacher and leave horses and arms to men.”

Poor old Jim never said a word, but stood looking at father straight in the face. Once he began, then he stopped as if the words wouldn’t come.

“You know, Father, as well as I do, that Jim’s afraid of nothing,” I burst out. “It ain’t that he’s thinking of. Why shouldn’t he try and save a part of our miserable family that’s going to the bad. What with one thing and another, as fast as the devil can trundle us. Why shouldn’t one be spared out of the lot?”

“Because it’s too late,” growled father; “too late by years. It’s sink or swim with all of us. If we work together we may make ten thousand pounds or more in the next four or five years, enough to clear out with altogether if we’ve luck. If any of us goes snivelling in now and giving himself up, they’d know there’s something crooked with the lot of us, and they’ll run us down somehow. I’ll see ’em all in the pit of h⁠⸺⁠l before I give in, and if Jim does, he opens the door and sells the pass on us. You can both do what you like.” And here the old man walked bang away and left us.

“No use, Dick,” says Jim. “If he won’t it’s no use my giving in. I can’t stand being thought a coward. Besides, if you were nabbed afterwards people might say it was through me. I’d sooner be killed and buried a dozen times over than that. It’s no use talking⁠—it isn’t to be⁠—we had better make up our minds once for all, and then let the matter drop.”

Poor old Jim. He had gone into it innocent from the very first. He was regular led in because he didn’t like to desert his own flesh and blood, even if it was wrong. Bit by bit he had gone on, not liking or caring for the thing one bit, but following the lead of others, till he reached his present pitch. How many men, and women too, there are in the world who seem born to follow the lead of others for good or evil! They get drawn in somehow, and end by paying the same penalty as those that meant nothing else from the start.

The finish of the whole thing was this, that we made up our minds to turn out in the bushranging line. It might seem foolish enough to outsiders, but when you come to think of it we couldn’t better ourselves much. We could do no worse than we had done, nor run any greater risk to speak of. We were “long sentence men” as it was, sure of years and years in prison; and, besides, we were certain of something extra for breaking gaol. Jim and Warrigal were “wanted,” and might be arrested by any chance trooper who could recollect their description in the Police Gazette. Father might be arrested on suspicion and remanded again and again until they could get some evidence against him for lots of things that he’d been in besides the Momberah cattle. When it was all boiled down it came to this, that we could make more money in one night by sticking up a coach or a bank than in any other way in a year. That when we had done it, we were no worse off than we were now, as far as being outlaws, and there was a chance⁠—not a very grand one, but still a chance⁠—that we might find a way to clear out of New South Wales altogether.

So we settled it at that. We had plenty of good horses⁠—what with the young ones coming on, that Warrigal could break, and what we had already. There was no fear of running short of horseflesh. Firearms we had enough for a dozen men. They were easy enough to come by. We knew that by every mail-coach that