A month's loafing in the Hollow.Nothing doing and nothing to think of except what was miserable enough, God knows.Then things began to shape themselves, in a manner of speaking.We didn't talk much together;but each man could see plain enough what the others was thinking of.
Dad growled out a word now and then, and Warrigal would look at us from time to time with a flash in his hawk's eyes that we'd seen once or twice before and knew the meaning of.As for Jim, we were bound to do something or other, if it was only to keep him from going melancholy mad.
I never seen any man changed more from what he used to be than Jim did.
He that was the most careless, happy-go-lucky chap that ever stepped, always in a good temper and full of his larks.At the end of the hottest day in summer on the plains, with no water handy, or the middle of the coldest winter night in an ironbark forest, and we sitting on our horses waiting for daylight, with the rain pouring down our backs, not game to light a fire, and our hands that cold we could hardly hold the reins, it was all one to Jim.Always jolly, always ready to make little of it all.
Always ready to laugh or chaff or go on with monkey tricks like a boy.
Now it was all the other way with him.He'd sit grizzling and smoking by himself all day long.No getting a word out of him.The only time he seemed to brighten up was once when he got a letter from Jeanie.
He took it away into the bush and stayed hours and hours.
From never thinking about anything or caring what came uppermost, he seemed to have changed all on the other tack and do nothing but think.
I'd seen a chap in Berrima something like him for a month or two;one day he manned the barber's razor and cut his throat.I began to be afraid Jim would go off his head and blow his brains out with his own revolver.
Starlight himself got to be cranky and restless-like too.
One night he broke out as we were standing smoking under a tree, a mile or so from the cave --`By all the devils, Dick, I can't stand this sort of thing much longer.
We shall go mad or drink ourselves to death' -- (we'd all been pretty well `on' the night before) -- `if we stick here till we're trapped or smoked out like a 'guana out of a tree spout.
We must make a rise somehow, and try for blue water again.
I've been fighting against the notion the whole time we've been here, but the devil and your old dad (who's a near relative, I believe)have been too strong for us.Of course, you know what it's bound to be?'
`I suppose so.I know when dad was away last week he saw that beggar and some of his mates.They partly made it up awhile back, but didn't fancy doing it altogether by themselves.They've been waiting on the chance of our standing in and your taking command.'
`Of course, the old story,' he says, throwing his cigar away, and giving a half laugh -- such a laugh it was, too.
`Captain Starlight again, I suppose.The paltry vanity of leadership, and of being in the front of my fellow-men, has been the ruin of me ever since I could recollect.If my people had let me go into the army, as I begged and prayed of them to do, it might have been all the other way.
I recollect that day and hour when my old governor refused my boyish petition, laughed at me -- sneered at me.I took the wrong road then.
I swear to you, Dick, I never had thought of evil till that cursed day which made me reckless and indifferent to everything.And this is the end --a wasted life, a felon's doom! Quite melodramatic, isn't it, Richard?
Well, we'll play out the last act with spirit."Enter first robber,"and so on.Good-night.'
He walked away.I never heard him say so much about himself before.
It set me thinking of what luck and chance there seemed to be in this world.
How men were not let do what they knew was best for 'em -- often and often --but something seemed to drive 'em farther and farther along the wrong road, like a lot of stray wild cattle that wants to make back to their own run, and a dog here, a fence the other way.A man on foot or a flock of sheep always keeps frightening 'em farther and farther from the old beat till they get back into a bit of back country or mallee scrub and stop there for good.
Cattle and horses and men and women are awful like one another in their ways, and the more you watch 'em the more it strikes you.
Another day or two idling and card-playing, another headache after too much grog at night, brought us to a regular go in about business, and then we fixed it for good.
We were to stick up the next monthly gold escort.That was all.
We knew it would be a heavy one and trusted to our luck to get clear off with the gold, and then take a ship for Honolulu or San Francisco.
A desperate chance; but we were desperate men.We had tried to work hard and honest.We had done so for best part of a year.
No one could say we had taken the value of a halfpenny from any man.
And yet we were not let stay right when we asked for nothing but to be let alone and live out the rest of our lives like men.
They wouldn't have us that way, and now they must take us across the grain, and see what they would gain by that.So it happened we went out one day with Warrigal to show us the way, and after riding for hours and hours, we came to a thick scrub.We rode through it till we came to an old cattle track.We followed that till we came to a tumble-down slab hut with a stockyard beside it.The yard had been mended, and the rails were up.
Seven or eight horses were inside, all in good condition.As many men were sitting or standing about smoking outside the old hut.
When we rode up they all came forward and we had it out.
We knew who was coming, and were ready for 'em.There was Moran, of course, quiet and savage-looking, just as like a black snake as ever twisting about with his deadly glittering eyes, wanting to bite some one.