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

made up his mind to go to New Zealand, and after that to Honolulu, perhaps to America.

“I’m not sure that I’ll ever come back, boys,” he said, “and if I were you I don’t think I would either. If you get over to San Francisco you’d find the Pacific Slope a very pleasant country to live in. The people and the place would suit you all to pieces. At any rate I’d stay away for a few years and wait till all this blows over.”

I wasn’t sorry when the steamer cleared the port, and got out of sight of land. There we were⁠—where we’d never been before⁠—in blue water. There was a stiff breeze, and in half-an-hour we shouldn’t have turned our heads if we’d seen Hood and the rest of ’em come riding after us on seahorses, with warrants as big as the mainsail. Jim made sure he was going to die straight off, and the pair of us wished we’d never seen Outer Back Momberah, nor Hood’s cattle, nor Starlight, nor Warrigal. We almost made up our minds to keep straight and square to the last day of our lives. However, the wind died down a bit next day, and we both felt a lot better⁠—better in body and worse in mind⁠—as often happens. Before we got to Melbourne we could eat and drink, smoke and gamble, and were quite ourselves again. We’d laid it out to have a reg’lar good month of it in town, takin’ it easy, and stopping nice and quiet at a good hotel, havin’ some reasonable pleasure. Why shouldn’t we see a little life? We’d got the cash, and we’d earned that pretty hard. It’s the hardest earned money of all, that’s got on the cross, if fellows only knew, but they never do till it’s too late.

When we got tired of doing nothing, and being in a strange place, we’d get across the border, above Albury somewhere, and work on the mountain runs till shearing came round again; and we could earn a fairish bit of money. Then we’d go home for Christmas after it was all over, and see mother and Aileen again. How glad and frightened they’d be to see us. It wouldn’t be safe altogether, but go we would.

XIII

We got to Melbourne all right, and though it’s a different sort of a place from Sydney, it’s a jolly enough town for a couple of young chaps with money in their pockets. Most towns are, for the matter of that. We took it easy, and didn’t go on the spree or do anything foolish. No, we weren’t altogether so green as that. We looked out for a quiet place to lodge, near the sea⁠—St. Kilda they call it, in front of the beach⁠—and we went about and saw all the sights, and for a time managed to keep down the thought that perhaps sooner or later we’d be caught, and have to stand our trial for this last affair of ours, and maybe one or two others. It wasn’t a nice thing to think of; and now and then it used to make both of us take an extra drop of grog by way of driving the thoughts of it out of our heads. That’s the worst of not being straight and square. A man’s almost driven to drink when he can’t keep from thinking of all sorts of miserable things day and night. We used to go to the horse-yards now and then, and the cattle-yards too. It was like old times to see the fat cattle and sheep penned up at Flemington, and the butchers riding out on their spicy nags or driving trotters. But their cattle-yards was twice as good as ours, and me and Jim used often to wonder why the Sydney people hadn’t managed to have something like them all these years, instead of the miserable cockatoo things at Homebush that we’d often heard the drovers and squatters grumble about.

However, one day, as we was sitting on the rails, talking away quite comfortable, we heard one butcher say to another, “My word, this is a smart bit of cattle-duffing⁠—a thousand head too!” “What’s that?” says the other man. “Why, haven’t you heard of it?” says the first one, and he pulls a paper out of his pocket, with this in big letters: “Great Cattle Robbery.⁠—A thousand head of Mr. Hood’s cattle were driven off and sold in Adelaide. Warrants are out for the suspected parties, who are supposed to have left the colony.” Here was a bit of news! We felt as if we could hardly help falling off the rails; but we didn’t show it, of course, and sat there for half-an-hour, talking to the buyers and sellers and cracking jokes like the others. But we got away home as soon as we could, and then we began to settle what we should do.

Warrants were out, of course, for Starlight, and us too. He was known, and so were we. Our descriptions were sure to be ready to send out all over the country. Warrigal they mightn’t have noticed. It was common enough to have a black boy or a half-caste with a lot of travelling cattle. Father had not shown up much. He had an old pea-jacket on, and they mightn’t have dropped down to him or the three other chaps that were in it with us; they were just like any other road hands. But about there being warrants out, with descriptions, in all the colonies, for a man to be identified, but generally known as Starlight, and for Richard and James Marston, we were as certain as that we were in St. Kilda, in a nice quiet little inn, overlooking the beach; and what a murder it was to have to leave it at all.

Leave the place we had to do at once. It wouldn’t do to be strollin’ about Melbourne with the chance of every policeman