Robbery under Arms Part 30

'What do you say, Maddie? We'll be able to mix up with these new chum Englishmen and Americans that are coming here in swarms, and puzzle Sergeant Goring and his troopers more than ever.'

'Oh! come, now! that would be mean,' says Maddie. 'I wouldn't be drove away from my own part of the country, if I was a man, by anybody. I'd stay and fight it out. Goring was here the other day, and tried to pick out something from father and us about the lot of you.'

'Ha!' says Starlight, his face growing dark, and different-looking about the eyes from what I'd ever seen him, 'did he? He'd better beware. He may follow up my trail once too often. And what did you tell him?'

'We told him a lot of things,' says the girl; 'but I am afeared they was none of 'em true. He didn't get much out of us, nor wouldn't if he was to come once a week.'

'I expect not,' says Jim; 'you girls are smart enough. There's no man in the police or out of it that'll take much change out of you. I'm most afraid of your father, though, letting the cat out of the bag; he's such an old duffer to blow.'

'He was nearly telling the sergeant he'd seen a better horse lately here than his famous chestnut Marlborough, only Bella trod on his toe, and told him the cows was in the wheat. Of course Goring would have dropped it was Rainbow, or some well-bred horse you chaps have been shaking lately.'

'You're a regular pearl of discretion, my dear,' says Starlight, 'and it's a pity, like some other folks, you haven't a better field for the exercise of your talents. However, that's very often the way in this world, as you'll perhaps find out when you're old and ugly, and the knowledge can't do you any good. Tell us all you heard about the coach accident.'

'My word! it was the greatest lark out,' says Maddie. She'd twice the fun in her the other had, and was that good-tempered nothing seemed to put her out. 'Everybody as come here seemed to have nothing else to talk about. Those that was going to the diggings, too, took it much easier than those that was coming away.'

'How was that?'

'Well, the chaps that come away mostly have some gold. They showed us some pretty fair lumps and nuggets, I can tell you. They seemed awfully gallied about being stuck up and robbed of it, and they'd heard yarns of men being tied to trees in the bush and left there to die.'

'Tell them for me, my fair Madeline, that Starlight and Company don't deal with single diggers; ours is a wholesale business--eh, d.i.c.k? We leave the retail robbery to meaner villains.'

We had the horses that quiet by this time that we could drive them the rest of the way to the Turon by ourselves. We didn't want to be too big a mob at Barnes's house. Any one might come in accidental, and it might get spread about. So after supper Warrigal was sent back; we didn't want his help any more, and he might draw attention. The way we were to take in the horses, and sell them, was all put up.

Jim and I were to drive them the rest of the way across the ranges to the Turon. Barnes was to put us on a track he knew that would take us in all right, and yet keep away from the regular highway. Starlight was to stay another day at Barnes's, keeping very quiet, and making believe, if any one came, to be a gentleman from Port Phillip that wasn't very well.

He'd come in and see the horses sold, but gammon to be a stranger, and never set eyes on us before.

'My word!' said Barnes, who just came in at the time, 'you've made talk enough for all the countryside with that mail coach racket of yours.

Every man, woman, and child that looks in here's sure to say, "Did you hear about the Goulburn mail being stuck up?" "Well, I did hear something," I says, and out it all comes. They wonder first whether the bush-rangers will be caught; where they're gone to that the police can't get 'em; how it was that one of 'em was so kind to the young lady as to give her new watch back, and whether Captain Starlight was as handsome as people say, and if Mrs. Buxter will ever get her watch back with the big reward the Government offered. More than that, whether they'll stick up more coaches or fly the country.'

'I'd like to have been there and see how Bill Webster looked,' says Maddie. 'He was here one day since, and kept ga.s.sin' about it all as if he wouldn't let none of you do only what he liked. I didn't think he was that game, and told him so. He said I'd better take a seat some day and see how I liked it. I asked him wasn't they all very good-looking chaps, and he said Starlight was genteel-lookin', but there was one great, big, rough-lookin' feller--that was you, Jim--as was ugly enough to turn a cask of beer sour.'

'I'll give him a hammerin' for that yet,' grumbles old Jim. 'My word, he was that shaky and blue-lookin' he didn't know whether I was white or black.'

We had a great spree that night in a quiet way, and got all the fun as was to be had under the circ.u.mstances. Barnes came out with some pretty good wine which Starlight shouted for all round. The old woman cooked us a stunning good dinner, which we made the girls sit down to and some cousins of theirs that lived close by. We were merry enough before the evening was out. Bella Barnes played the piano middling, and Maddie could sing first-rate, and all of them could dance. The last thing I recollect was Starlight showing Maddie what he called a minuet step, and Jonathan and the old woman sitting on the sofa as grave as owls.

Anyhow, we all enjoyed ourselves. It was a grand change after being so long alone. The girls romped and laughed and pretended to be offended every now and then, but we had a regular good lark of it, and didn't feel any the worse at daylight next morning.

Jim and I were away before sunrise, and after we'd once got on the road that Jonathan showed us we got on well enough. We were dressed just like common bushmen. There were plenty on the road just then bringing cattle and horses to the diggings. It was well known that high prices were going there and that everybody paid in cash. No credit was given, of course.

We had on blue serge shirts, moleskin trousers, and roughish leather gaiters that came up to the knee, with ponchos strapped on in front; inside them was a spare shirt or two; we had oldish felt hats, as if we'd come a good way. Our saddles and bridles were rusty-looking and worn; the horses were the only things that were a little too good, and might bring the police to suspect us. We had to think of a yarn about them. We looked just the same as a hundred other long-legged six-foot natives with our beards and hair pretty wild--neither better nor worse.

As soon as Starlight came on to the Turon he was to rig himself out as a regular swell, and gammon he'd just come out from England to look at the goldfields. He could do that part wonderfully well. We would have backed him to take in the devil himself, if he saw him, let alone goldfields police, if Sergeant Goring wasn't about.

The second day Jim and I were driving quietly and easy on the road, the colts trotting along as steady as old stock horses, and feeding a bit every now and then. We knew we were getting near the Turon, so many tracks came in from all parts, and all went one way. All of a sudden we heard a low rumbling, roaring noise, something like the tide coming in on the seash.o.r.e.

'I say, Jim, old man, we haven't made any mistake--crossed over the main range and got back to the coast, have we?'

'Not likely,' he said; 'but what the deuce is that row? I can't reckon it up for the life of me.'

I studied and studied. On it went grinding and rattling like all the round pebbles in the world rolling on a beach with a tidy surf on. I tumbled at last.

'Remember that thing with the two rockers we saw at the Hermit's Hut in the Hollow?' I said to Jim. 'We couldn't make out what it was. I know now; it was a gold cradle, and there's hundreds and thousands rocking there at the Turon. That's what's the matter.'

'We're going to see some life, it strikes me,' says he. 'We'll know it all directly. But the first thing we've got to do is to shut these young 'uns up safe in the sale-yard. Then we can knock round this town in comfort.'

We went outside of a rocky point, and sure enough here was the first Australian gold-diggings in full blast. What a sight it was, to be sure!

Jim and I sat in our saddles while the horses went to work on the green gra.s.s of the flat, and stared as if we'd seen a bit of another world. So it was another world to us, straight away from the sad-voiced solitudes of the bush.

Barring Sydney or Melbourne, we'd never seen so many men in a crowd before; and how different they looked from the crawling people of a town! A green-banked rapid river ran before us, through a deep narrow valley. The bright green flats looked so strange with the yellow water rippling and rushing between them. Upon that small flat, and by the bank, and in the river itself, nearly 20,000 men were at work, harder and more silently than any crowd we'd ever seen before. Most of 'em were digging, winding up greenhide buckets filled with gravel from shafts, which were sunk so thickly all over the place that you could not pa.s.s between without jostling some one. Others were driving carts heavily laden with the same stuff towards the river, in which hundreds of men were standing up to their waists washing the gold out of tin pans, iron buckets, and every kind of vessel or utensil. By far the greater number of miners used things like child's cradles, rocking them to and fro while a constant stream of yellow water pa.s.sed through. Very little talk went on; every man looked feverishly anxious to get the greatest quant.i.ty of work done by sundown.

Foot police and mounted troopers pa.s.sed through the crowd every now and then, but there was apparently no use or no need for them; that time was to come. Now and then some one would come walking up, carrying a knapsack, not a swag, and showing by his round, rosy face that he hadn't seen a summer's sun in Australia. We saw a trooper riding towards us, and knowing it was best to take the bull by the horns, I pushed over to him, and asked if he could direct us to where Mr. Stevenson's, the auctioneer's, yard was.

'Whose horses are these?' he said, looking at the brands. 'B.M., isn't it?'

'Bernard Muldoon, Lower Macquarie,' I answered. 'There's a friend of his, a new chum, in charge; he'll be here to-morrow.'

'Go on down Main Street [the first street in a diggings is always called Main Street] as you're going,' he said carelessly, giving us all a parting look through, 'and take the first lane to the right. It takes you to the yard. It's sale-day to-morrow; you're in luck.'

It was rather sharp work getting the colts through men, women, and children, carts, cradles, shafts, and tin dishes; but they were a trifle tired and tender-footed, so in less than twenty minutes they were all inside of a high yard, where they could scarcely see over the cap, with a row of loose boxes and stalls behind. We put 'em into Joe Stevenson's hands to sell--that was what every one called the auctioneer--and walked down the long street.

My word, we were stunned, and no mistake about it. There was nothing to see but a rocky river and a flat, deep down between hills like we'd seen scores and scores of times all our lives and thought nothing of, and here they were digging gold out of it in all directions, just like potatoes, as Maddie Barnes said. Some of the lumps we saw--nuggets they called 'em--was near as big as new potatoes, without a word of a lie in it. I couldn't hardly believe it; but I saw them pa.s.sing the little washleather bags of gold dust and lumps of dirty yellow gravel, but heavier, from one to the other just as if they were nothing--nearly 4 Pounds an ounce they said it was all worth, or a trifle under. It licked me to think it had been hid away all the time, and not even the blacks found it out. I believe our blacks are the stupidest, laziest beggars in the whole world. That old man who lived and died in the Hollow, though--HE must have known about it; and the queer-looking thing with the rockers we saw near his hut, that was the first cradle ever was made in Australia.

The big man of the goldfield seemed to be the Commissioner. We saw him come riding down the street with a couple of troopers after his heels, looking as if all the place, and the gold too, belonged to him. He had to settle all the rows and disputes that came up over the gold, and the boundaries of the claims, as they called the twenty-foot paddocks they all washed in, and a nice time he must have had of it! However, he was pretty smart and quick about it. The diggers used to crowd round and kick up a bit of a row sometimes when two lots of men were fighting for the same claim and gold coming up close by; but what he said was law, and no mistake. When he gave it out they had to take it and be content.

Then he used to ride away and not trouble his head any more about it; and after a bit of barneying it all seemed to come right. Men liked to be talked to straight, and no shilly-shally.

What I didn't like so much was the hunting about of the poor devils that had not got what they called a licence--a printed thing giving 'em leave for to dig gold on the Crown lands. This used to cost a pound or thirty shillings a month--I forget rightly which--and, of course, some of the chaps hadn't the money to get it with--spent what they had, been unlucky, or run away from somewhere, and come up as bare of everything to get it out of the ground.

You'd see the troopers asking everybody for their licences, and those that hadn't them would be marched up to the police camp and chained to a big log, sometimes for days and days. The Government hadn't time to get up a lock-up, with cells and all the rest of it, so they had to do the chain business. Some of these men had seen better days, and felt it; the other diggers didn't like it either, and growled a good deal among themselves. We could see it would make bad blood some day; but there was such a lot of gold being got just then that people didn't bother their heads about anything more than they could help--plenty of gold, plenty of money, people bringing up more things every day from the towns for the use of the diggers. You could get pretty near anything you wanted by paying for it. Hard work from daylight to dark, with every now and then a big find to sweeten it, when a man could see as much money lying at his foot, or in his hand, as a year's work--no, nor five--hadn't made for him before. No wonder people were not in a hurry to call out for change in a place like the Turon in the year 1850!

The first night put the stuns on us. Long rows of tents, with big roaring log fires in front hot enough to roast you if you went too near; mobs of men talking, singing, chaffing, dealing--all as jolly as a lot of schoolboys. There was grog, too, going, as there is everywhere. No publics were allowed at first, so, of course, it was sold on the sly.

It's no use trying to make men do without grog, or the means of getting it; it never works. I don't hold with every shanty being licensed and its being under a man's nose all day long; but if he has the money to pay for it, and wants to have an extra gla.s.s of grog or two with his friends, or because he has other reasons, he ought to be able to get it without hardships being put in his way.

The Government was afraid of there being tremendous fights and riots at the diggings, because there was all sorts of people there, English and French, Spaniards and Italians, natives and Americans, Greeks and Germans, Swedes and negroes, every sort and kind of man from every country in the world seemed to come after a bit. But they needn't have been frightened at the diggers. As far as we saw they were the sensiblest lot of working men we ever laid eyes on; not at all inclined to make a row for nothing--quite the other way. But the shutting off of public-houses led to sly grog tents, where they made the digger pay a pound a bottle for his grog, and didn't keep it very good either.

When the police found a sly grog tent they made short work of it, I will say. Jim and I were close by, and saw them at the fun. Somebody had informed on the man, or they had some other reason; so they rode down, about a dozen troopers, with the Commissioner at their head. He went in and found two casks of brandy and one of rum, besides a lot of bottled stuff. They didn't want that for their own use, he believed.

First he had the heads knocked in of the hogsheads; then all the bottled wine and spirits were unpacked and stowed in a cart, while the straw was put back in the tent. Then the men and women were ordered to come outside, and a trooper set fire to the straw. In five minutes the tent and everything in it was a ma.s.s of flame.

There was a big crowd gathered round outside. They began to groan when the trooper lit the straw, but they did nothing, and went quietly home after a bit. We had the horses to see after next day. Just before the sale began, at twelve o'clock, and a goodish crowd had turned up, Starlight rides quietly up, the finest picture of a new chum you ever set eyes on. Jim and I could hardly keep from bursting out laughing.

He had brought up a quiet cobby sort of stock horse from the Hollow, plain enough, but a wonder to go, particularly over broken country. Of course, it didn't do to bring Rainbow out for such work as this. For a wonder, he had a short tail. Well, he'd squared this cob's tail and hogged his mane so that he looked like another animal. He was pretty fat, too.

He was dressed up to the nines himself, and if we didn't expect him we wouldn't have known him from a crow. First of all, he had a thick rough suit of tweed clothing on, all the same colour, with a round felt hat.

He had a bran new saddle and bridle, that hadn't got the yellow rubbed off them yet. He had an English hunting whip in his hand, and brown dogskin gloves. He had tan leather gaiters that b.u.t.toned up to his knees. He'd shaved his beard all but his moustache and a pair of short whiskers.

He had an eyegla.s.s in his eye, which he let drop every now and then, putting it up when he wanted to look at anybody.

When he rode up to the yard everybody stared at him, and one or two of the diggers laughed and began to call out 'Joe.' Jim and I thought how sold some of them would have been if he turned on them and they'd found out who it was. However, he pushed up to the auctioneer, without looking out right or left, and drawled--