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

the like of us lose all we have in the world, and no one would lend us a pound afterwards to save our lives.”

“It’s not quite so bad as that,” said George. “I shall lose my year’s work unless rain comes, and most of the cattle and horses besides; but I shall be able to get a few pounds to go on with, however the season goes.”

“Oh! if you like to bow and scrape to rich people, well and good,” I said; “but that’s not my way. We have as good a right to our share of the land and some other good things as they have, and why should we be done out of it?”

“If we pay for the land as they do, certainly,” said George.

“But why should we pay? God Almighty, I suppose, made the land and the people too, one to live on the other. Why should we pay for what is our own? I believe in getting my share somehow.”

“That’s a sort of argument that doesn’t come out right,” said George. “How would you like another man to come and want to halve the farm with you?”

“I shouldn’t mind; I should go halves with someone else who had a bigger one,” I said. “More money too, more horses, more sheep, a bigger house! Why should he have it and not me?”

“That’s a lazy man’s argument, and⁠—well, not an honest man’s,” said George, getting up and putting on his cabbage-tree. “I can’t sit and hear you talk such rot. Nobody can work better than you and Jim, when you like. I wonder you don’t leave such talk to fellows like Frowser, that’s always spouting at the Shearers’ Arms.”

“Nonsense or not, if a dry season comes and knocks all our work over, I shall help myself to someone’s stuff that has more than he knows what to do with.”

“Why can’t we all go shearing, and make as much as will keep us for six months?” said George. “I don’t know what we’d do without the squatters.”

“Nor I either; more ways than one; but Jim and I are going shearing next week. So perhaps there won’t be any need for duffing after all.”

“Oh, Dick!” said Aileen, “I can’t bear to hear you make a joke of that kind of thing. Don’t we all know what it leads to! Wouldn’t it be better to live on dry bread and be honest than to be full of money and never know the day when you’d be dragged to gaol?”

“I’ve heard all that before; but ain’t there lots of people that have made their money by all sorts of villainy, that look as well as the best, and never see a gaol?”

“They’re always caught some day,” says poor Aileen, sobbing, “and what a dreadful life of anxiety they must lead!”

“Not at all,” I said. “Look at Lucksly, Squeezer, and Frying-pan Jack. Everybody knows how they got their stock and their money. See how they live. They’ve got stations, and public-house and town property, and they get richer every year. I don’t think it pays to be too honest in a dry country.”

“You’re a naughty boy, Dick; isn’t he, Jim?” she said, smiling through her tears. “But he doesn’t mean half what he says, does he?”

“Not he,” says Jim; “and very likely we’ll have lots of rain after all.”

VIII

The “big squatter,” as he was called on our side of the country, was Mr. Falkland. He was an Englishman that had come young to the colony, and worked his way up by degrees. He had had no money when he first came, people said; indeed, he often said so himself. He was not proud, at any rate in that way, for he was not above telling a young fellow that he should never be downhearted because he hadn’t a coat to his back or a shilling in his pocket, because he, Herbert Falkland, had known what it was to be without either. “This was the best country in the whole world,” he used to say, “for a gentleman who was poor or a working man.” The first sort could always make an independence if they were moderately strong, liked work, and did not drink. There were very few countries where idle, unsteady people got rich. “As for the poor man, he was the real rich man in Australia; high wages, cheap food, lodging, clothing, travelling. What more did he want? He could save money, live happily, and die rich, if he wasn’t a fool or a rogue. Unfortunately, these last were highly popular professions; and many people, high and low, belonged to them here⁠—and everywhere else.”

We were all well up in this kind of talk, because for the last two or three years, since we had begun to shear pretty well, we had always shorn at his shed. He was one of those gentlemen⁠—and he was a gentleman, if ever there was one⁠—that takes a deal of notice of his working hands, particularly if they were young. Jim he took a great fancy to the first moment he saw him. He didn’t care so much about me.

“You’re a sulky young dog, Richard Marston,” he used to say. “I’m not sure that you’ll come to any good; and though I don’t like to say all I hear about your father before you, I’m afraid he doesn’t teach you anything worth knowing. But Jim there’s a grand fellow; if he’d been caught young and weaned from all of your lot, he’d have been an honour to the land he was born in. He’s too good for you all.”

“Every one of you gentlemen wants to be a small God Almighty,” I said impudently. “You’d like to break us all in and put us in yokes and bows, like a lot of working bullocks.”

“You mistake me, my boy, and all the rest of us who are worth calling men, let alone gentlemen. We are your best friends, and would help you in