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

hour. Just as he said this he looked out from behind his tree, and I’m blest if a bullet from Hamilton’s rifle didn’t knock the revolver slap out of bis hand; it gave his wrist a jar he didn’t get over for a bit and spoiled the turn-round arrangements, so that he couldn’t load again. After a bit he couldn’t move his arm, so he was out of it as far as the shooting went. There was a chance that the burning stable might catch the house. There was a load of straw in a dray halfway between it and the cottage. If they could have set this alight, Hamilton would have had to come out and beg for mercy, when, I don’t believe, he’d have found any that night. But Mrs. Hamilton behaved like a heroine that night, if ever a woman did in this world. She went out with the servant girl⁠—a regular plum too for pluck and coolness⁠—and these two managed to drag a tarpaulin over the cart, and so stopped any stray sparks from catching.

By George, that was a game action, and no mistake; it wasn’t the only thing the misses and the maid did that night. Once Mr. Hamilton got to the end of his cartridges⁠—he blazed away at such a tearing rate, and it’s well he did or they’d have jumped the house long before. As I was saying (it was one of themselves told me all about the whole racket afterwards), they saw Mrs. Hamilton cross the room just in the line of their fire, over she walked as steady as a soldier. Not that they intended to fire at her, they weren’t quite bad enough for that, but she went across just as they’d pulled trigger, and they heard afterwards that one of the bullets just grazed her shoulder. Anyhow she didn’t seem to mind, and as it happened, one of them very cartridges she handed her husband carried a man’s life in it. The next thing they saw it half riled ’em and half made ’em laugh was the servant girl walk in with a tray with wine and glasses and biscuits on it, just as if this was the regular family way of spending the evening. Shows how people differ from one another. Here was this girl and her missus as cool and steady as the Guards at Waterloo, and there was the man-cook in the kitchen⁠—a lying under the table, flat on his face, cryin’ and prayin’ and swearin’, all in a breath, frightened out of his miserable life. He ought to have been taken out and stuck before one of the windows. He was worse than a blackfellow I consider.

I daresay Mr. Hamilton felt better after a glass of grog. I should think he wanted it, after burning all that powder. It’s a dry thing fighting at the best of times. Anyhow, now the stable was burnt down pretty low, Burke thought he’d get a better chance over one corner of the garden fence, so he crawled up and popped his head over the fence at a place where he could see through a side window that led into the veranda. If he could burst this window open when Mr. Hamilton was firing the other way, he’d take him in the flank, and Moran and Daly they’d made it up to rush for the front as soon as they heard the glass smash in the side window.

It wasn’t a bad notion, but Burke didn’t know that Mrs. Hamilton had watched him from a dark corner in the veranda. I believe that brave lady heard everything and saw everything that happened that night, and was as good as two men. She that had been brought up in Sydney and never saw any bush ways till she followed her husband to Kadombla. Anyhow, when she told him about Burke he slips out, stands behind an angle, and the next time Burke pops up his head he lets him have it. Burke drops on his lack with a rifle-bullet slap through his throat. He never stirred again, and Mr. Hamilton was firing another broadside from the windows of the parlour before they knew he was down.

When they went over to him they found him as dead as a doornail. Things didn’t look over bright now, one man dead, one man hurt, for Moran’s arm was swelling up and giving him fits. The other two came to think it wasn’t good enough. So they dragged Burke⁠—he wasn’t the worst of ’em by a long way⁠—under a she-oak tree, took his revolver, and left him there. Then they went down to the creek, where they’d tied the horses, and rode off.

Mr. Hamilton waited for about an hour, so as to be sure they weren’t stringing him on to go into the open, to be potted at. Then he went down to the men’s hut and roused them up. The police came over in the morning, but beyond identifying Burke and getting a coroner’s inquest held on him, there wasn’t anything else they could do. They left a man in charge of the body, and one to look after the house and came away.

So was the end of the famous Kadombla battle. Mr. Hamilton lost a good stable and a good horse, and had all the front of his house riddled and smashed with bullets; but he scared off the other side, and had a long way the best of it.

A line from Jim came a fortnight afterwards. He got safe down all the way to Melbourne, and met Jeanie and his baby all right at St. Kilda. Nobody ever tumbled that he wasn’t Joe Moreton, and the old Mr. Watson was particular pleased with his steadiness and good conduct, as he said. He made him a present over and above his contract money, and said he should always feel obliged to him, Jim said he wasn’t obliged to him at all, it was the other way; which was true enough, if he’d only known