Robbery Under Arms - Rolf Boldrewood (most important books of all time .TXT) 📗

used to be shot at⁠—and, my word, they meant it, too. He felt that, for three bullets rattled his way just as Sir Ferdinand spoke.

Like Jim and most natives of his sort, he could ride above a bit; and, my word! he sat down on his horse, and the way he went through the timber was a caution. The old horse was fully fit, and not even Sir Ferdinand was our equal in scrub riding, and we hitting out for our lives, too. Lucky for us and Joe we got into an angle in the scrub, where the timber was that close a naked horse could hardly get through comfortable.

Before we’d gone five miles we steadied and listened. Sir Ferdinand and his troopers were clean out of sight; we couldn’t even hear their horses’ hoofs on the slaty ranges. Then we pulled up for a bit. There was no fear of Joe’s pulling up though; the last we saw of him he was standing in his stirrups crossing a bit of open ground and riding for dear life. He was out of sight pretty soon after. He knew every foot of ground between here and where he lived on the Fish River, over 40 miles away. So we made sure he’d be somewhere pretty close there before he drew rein. At his present pace all the police in New South Wales couldn’t catch him.

Starlight and I, first of all, looked well around for our landmarks, so as to make sure we shouldn’t be riding in a ring, and then stretched out for the Hollow, which we made a bit after sundown, and never saw a policeman all the way.

When we got in, father twigged at once that we’d had a brush for it, and began to swear at us for being such cursed fools as to run all manner of risks when there was no call to do it⁠—not as if we made anything by it, but just for simple foolishness and brag. When he’d about done, all of a sudden he misses Jim, and he faces round on me as fierce as old Crib, and says, “What have ye done with the boy? If there’s anything happened to him, you can clear out, Dick Marston, and take your chance, for I won’t have ye next or anigh the place.”

I turned on him then, and gave it him back for a bit, because I was riled that everybody should always be thinking of Jim, while no one seemed to care a hang what became of me, except Gracey. Except Gracey! If it wasn’t for thinking of her sometimes, and how she stuck to me through thick and thin, I believe I’d have got that savage and desperate again all the world that I’d have turned out as bad as Moran himself.

That was what partly made him the wild beast he was, I r’aly believe. He always swore he’d been lagged innocent for his first offence, and had to do five years for stealing a horse he’d never seen. However, he’d shook many a one he never was had for, so that made it even. But, somehow, I’ve always found that a man thinks nothing much about doing time for what he knows he’s rightly punished for.

But he never forgets being made to suffer⁠—and hard lines it is⁠—for what he hasn’t done. And that injustice’ll rankle in a man’s heart for years and years⁠—perhaps all his life⁠—I and make him tenfold a worse criminal than he would have been. So there’s no mistake⁠—magistrates and judges and all that lot ought to be as careful as they can; for, you’d better believe me, it’s far and away better to let two or three bad ’uns off now and again than to convict the wrong man.

However, Starlight stashed the row before long, and blew the old man up a bit for being venturesome himself and going out for the letters when any boy could have boned him, and then giving it, us for doing just the same thing.

“As it turns out,” he says, “Jim’s got the best chance for a getaway that he’d have had for five years if he’d stopped here; and if you cared half as much about him as anybody else in this world except your blessed old self, you’d be thankful to Dick and me for helping him on his road off; for, by George! if he’d been here another six months you’d have had to bury him alongside of old Devereux.”

Then he told father all about Jim driving the old gentleman down to Melbourne, and made such a good yarn out of Joe Moreton’s chivey and the way he looked round and made tracks when he heard the bullets fly about his ears, that old dad smoothed over a bit, and we had a glass of grog all round and turned in.

We’d got something to do to get through our mail this time. We’d had none on purpose all the time Aileen was with us. There were papers in heaps, and a good lot of letters. Dad said old Davy would hardly speak to him and kept on muttering, “Woe and death. Woe and death. He that sheddeth man’s blood,” and things like that. That was what set him on the booze when he got home, and he was vexed as well that there was no one to let him know what was in the letters and read the papers to him. Well, I don’t wonder he was a bit crabbed, having to stop by himself for a couple of days, with nothing but his own thoughts⁠—and what jolly companions they must have been⁠—and a lot of papers alongside of him that he could have took off his mind with; and no way of getting a word or a sound out of them. I think about these things now, but I didn’t then.

My word! it must be awful rough on man or woman, when you come to think