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

“I don’t see so much of that.”

“Because you often fight against your own good. We should like to see you all have farms of your own⁠—to be all well taught and able to make the best of your lives⁠—not driven to drink, as many of you are, because you have no notion of any rational amusement, and anything between hard work and idle dissipation.”

“And suppose you had all this power,” I said⁠—for if I was afraid of father there wasn’t another man living that could overcrow me⁠—“don’t you think you’d know the way to keep all the good things for yourselves? Hasn’t it always been so?”

“I see your argument,” he said, quite quiet and reasonable, just as if I had been a swell like himself⁠—that was why he was unlike any other man I ever knew⁠—“and it is a perfectly fair way of putting it. But your class might, I think, always rely upon there being enough kindness and wisdom in ours to prevent that state of things. Unfortunately, neither side trusts the other enough. And now the bell is going to ring, I think.”

Jim and I stopped at Boree shed till all the sheep were cut out. It pays well if the weather is pretty fair, and it isn’t bad fun when there’s twenty or thirty chaps of the right sort in the shearers’ hut; there’s always some fun going on. Shearers work pretty hard, and as they buy their own rations generally, they can afford to live well. After a hard day’s shearing⁠—that is, from five o’clock in the morning to seven at night, going best pace all the time, every man working as hard as if he was at it for his life⁠—one would think a man would be too tired to do anything. But we were mostly strong and hearty, and at that age a man takes a deal of killing; so we used to have a little card-playing at night to pass away the time.

Very few of the fellows had any money to spend. They couldn’t get any either until shearing was over and they were paid off; but they’d get someone who could write to scribble a lot of I.O.U.s, and they did as well.

We used to play “all-fours” and “loo,” and now and then an American game which some of the fellows had picked up. It was strange how soon we managed to get into big stakes. I won at first, and then Jim and I began to lose, and had such a lot of I.O.U.s out that I was afraid we’d have no money to take home after shearing. Then I began to think what a fool I’d been to play myself and drag Jim into it, for he didn’t want to play at first.

One day I got a couple of letters from home⁠—one from Aileen and another in a strange hand. It had come to our little post-office, and Aileen had sent it on to Boree.

When I opened it there were a few lines, with father’s name at the bottom. He couldn’t write, so I made sure that Starlight had written it for him. He was quite well, it said; and to look out for him about Christmas time; he might come home then, or send for us; to stop at Boree if we could get work, and keep a couple of horses in good trim, as he might want us. A couple of five-pound notes fell out of the letter as I opened it.

When I looked at them first I felt a kind of fear. I knew what they came from. And I had a sort of feeling that we should be better without them. However, the devil was too strong for me. Money’s a tempting thing, whether it’s notes or gold, especially when a man’s in debt. I had begun to think the fellows looked a little cool on us the last three or four nights, as our losses were growing big.

So I gave Jim his share; and after tea, when we sat down again, there weren’t more than a dozen of us that were in the card racket. I flung down my note, and Jim did his, and told them that we owed to take the change out of that and hand us over their paper for the balance.

They all stared, for such a thing hadn’t been seen since the shearing began. Shearers, as a rule, come from their homes in the settled districts very bare. They are not very well supplied with clothes; their horses are poor and done up; and they very seldom have a note in their pockets, unless they have managed to sell a spare horse on the journey.

So we were great men for the time, looked at by the others with wonder and respect. We were fools enough to be pleased with it. Strangely, too, our luck turned from that minute, and it ended in our winning not only our own back, but more than as much more from the other men.

I don’t think Mr. Falkland liked these goings on. He wouldn’t have allowed cards at all if he could have helped it. He was a man that hated what was wrong, and didn’t value his own interest a pin when it came in the way. However, the shearing hut was our own, in a manner of speaking, and as long as we shore clean and kept the shed going the overseer, Mr. M’Intyre, didn’t trouble his head much about our doings in the hut. He was anxious to get done with the shearing, to get the wool into the bales before the dust came in, and the grass seed ripened, and the clover burrs began to fall.

“Why should ye fash yoursel’,” I heard him say once to Mr. Falkland, “aboot these young deevils like the Marstons? They’re as good’s ready money in auld Nick’s purse. It’s bred and born and welded in them. Ye’ll just have the