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

day’s gone. Jim knows it as well as me. There’s no help for it now. We’ll have to do like the rest⁠—enjoy ourselves a bit while we can, and stand up to our fight when the trouble comes.”

She took her hand away, and rode on with her rein loose and her head down. I could see the tears falling down her face, but after a bit she put herself to rights, and we rode quietly up to the door. Mother was working away in her chair, and father walking up and down before the door smoking.

When we were letting go the horses, father comes up and says⁠—

“I’ve got a bit of news for you, boys; Starlight’s been took, and the darkie with him.”

“Where?” I said. Somehow I felt struck all of a heap by hearing this. I’d got out of the way of thinking they’d drop on him. As for Jim, he heard it straight enough, but he went on whistling and patting the mare’s neck, teasing her like, because she was so uneasy to get her headstall off and run after the others.

“Why, in New Zealand, to be sure. The blamed fool stuck there all this time, just because he found himself comfortably situated among people as he liked. I wonder how he’ll fancy Berrima after it all? Sarves him well right.”

“But how did you come to hear about it?” We knew father couldn’t read nor write.

“I have a chap as is paid to read the papers reg’lar, and to put me on when there’s anything in ’em as I want to know. He’s bin over here today and give me the office. Here’s the paper he left.”

Father pulls out a crumpled-up dirty-lookin’ bit of newspaper. It wasn’t much to look at; but there was enough to keep us in readin’, and thinkin’, too, for a good while, as soon as we made it out. In pretty big letters, too.

Important Capture by Detective Stillbrook, of the New South Wales Police

That was atop of the page, then comes this:⁠—

Our readers may remember the description given in this journal, some months since, of a cattle robbery on the largest scale, when upwards of a thousand head were stolen from one of Mr. Hood’s stations, driven to Adelaide, and then sold, by a party of men whose names have not as yet transpired. It is satisfactory to find that the leader of the gang, who is well known to the police by the assumed name of “Starlight,” with a half-caste lad recognised as an accomplice, has been arrested by this active officer. It appears that, from information received, Detective Stillbrook went to New Zealand, and, after several months’ patient search, took his passage in the boat which left that colony, in order to meet the mail steamer, outward bound, for San Francisco. As the passengers were landing he arrested a gentlemanlike and well-dressed personage, who, with his servant, was about to proceed to Menzies’s Hotel. Considerable surprise was manifested by the other passengers, with whom the prisoner had become universally popular. He indignantly denied all knowledge of the charge; but we have reason to believe that there will be no difficulty as to identification. A large sum of money in gold and notes was found upon him. Other arrests are likely to follow.

This looked bad; for a bit we didn’t know what to think. While Jim and I was makin’ it all out, with the help of a bit of candle we smuggled out⁠—we dursn’t take it inside⁠—father was smokin’ his pipe⁠—in the old fashion⁠—and saying nothing. When we’d done he put up his pipe in his pouch and begins to talk.

“It’s come just as I said, and knowed it would, through Starlight’s cussed flashness and carryin’s on in fine company. If he’d cleared out and made for the Islands as I warned him to do, and he settled to, or as good, afore he left us that day at the camp, he’d been safe in some o’ them ’Merikin places he was always gassin’ about, and all this wouldn’t ’a happened.”

“He couldn’t help that,” says Jim; “he thought they’d never know him from any other swell in Canterbury or wherever he was. He’s been took in like many another man. What I look at is this: he won’t squeak. How are they to find out that we had any hand in it?”

“That’s what I’m dubersome about,” says father, lightin’ his pipe again. “Nobody down there got much of a look at me, and I let my beard grow on the road and shaved clean soon’s I got back, same as I always do. Now the thing is, does anyone know that you boys was in the fakement?”

“Nobody’s likely to know but him and Warrigal. The knockabouts and those other three chaps won’t come it on us for their own sakes. We may as well stop here till Christmas is over and then make down to the Barwon, or somewhere thereabouts. We could take a long job at droving till the derry’s off a bit.”

“If you’ll be said by me,” the old man growls out, “you’ll make tracks for the Hollow afore daylight and keep dark till we hear how the play goes. I know Starlight’s as close as a spring-lock; but that chap Warrigal don’t cotton to either of you, and he’s likely to give you away if he’s pinched himself⁠—that’s my notion of him.”

“Starlight’ll keep him from doing that,” Jim says; “the boy’ll do nothing his master don’t agree to, and he’d break his neck if he found him out in any dog’s trick like that.”

“Starlight and he ain’t in the same cell, you take your oath. I don’t trust no man except him. I’ll be off now, and if you’ll take a fool’s advice, though he is your father, you’ll go too; we can be there by daylight.”

Jim and I looked at each other.

“We promised to stay Chris’mas with mother and Aileen,” says he, “and if all the devils in