Having out-and-out good hacks, and being all of them chaps that had been born in the bush and knew it like a book, it was wonderful how they managed to rob people at one place one day, and then be at some place a hundred miles off the next.Ever so many times they came off, and they'd call one another Starlight and Marston, and so on, till the people got regularly dumbfoundered, and couldn't tell which of the gang it was that seemed to be all over the country, and in two places at the same time.We used to laugh ourselves sometimes, when we'd hear tell that all the travellers passing Big Hill on a certain day were `stuck up by Wall's gang and robbed.' Every man Jack that came along for hours was made to stand behind a clump of trees with two of the gang guarding them, so as the others couldn't see them as they came up.They all had to deliver up what they'd got about 'em, and no one was allowed to stir till sundown, for fear they should send word to the police.Then the gang went off, telling them to stay where they were for an hour or else they'd come back and shoot them.
This would be on the western road, perhaps.Next day a station on the southern road, a hundred and twenty miles off, would be robbed by the same lot.Money and valuables taken away, and three or four of the best horses.Their own they'd leave behind in such a state that any one could see how far and fast they'd been ridden.
They often got stood to, when they were hard up for a mount, and it was this way.The squatters weren't alike, by any manner of means, in their way of dealing with them.Many of them had lots of fine riding-horses in their paddocks.These would be yarded some fine night, the best taken and ridden hard, perhaps returned next morning, perhaps in a day or two.
It was pretty well known who had used them, but nothing was said;the best policy, some think, is to hold a candle to the devil, especially when the devil's camped close handy to your paddock, and might any time sack your house, burn down your woolshed and stacks, or even shoot at your worshipful self if he didn't like the way you treated him and his imps.
These careful respectable people didn't show themselves too forward either in giving help or information to the police.Not by no means.
They never encouraged them to stay when they came about the place, and weren't that over liberal in feeding their horses, or giving them a hand in any way, that they'd come again in a hurry.
If they were asked about the bush-rangers, or when they'd been last seen, they were very careful, and said as little as possible.
No one wonders at people like the Barnes's, or little farmers, or the very small sort of settlers, people with one flock of sheep or a few cows, doing this sort of thing; they have a lot to lose and nothing to get if they gain ill-will.But regular country gentlemen, with big properties, lots of money, and all the rest of it, they're there to show a good example to the countryside, whether it paid for the time or whether it didn't; and all us sort of chaps, on the cross or not, like them all the better for it.
When I say all of us, I don't mean Moran.A sulky, black-hearted, revengeful brute he always was -- I don't think he'd any manly feeling about him.He was a half-bred gipsy, they told us that knew where he was reared, and Starlight said gipsy blood was a queer cross, for devilry and hardness it couldn't be beat; he didn't wonder a bit at Moran's being the scoundrel he was.
No doubt he `had it in' for more than one of the people who helped the police to chevy Wall and his lot about.From what I knew of him I was sure he'd do some mischief one of these days, and make all the country ten times as hot against us as they were now.He had no mercy about him.
He'd rather shoot a man any day than not; and he'd burn a house down just for the pleasure of seeing how the owner looked when it was lighted.
Starlight used to say he despised men that tried to save themselves cowardly-like more than he could say, and thought them worse than the bush-rangers themselves.
Some of them were big people, too.
But other country gentlemen, like Mr.Falkland, were quite of a different pattern.If they all acted like him I don't think we should any of us have reigned as long as we did.
They helped and encouraged the police in every possible way.
They sent them information whenever they had received any worth while.
They lent them horses freely when their own were tired out and beaten.
More than that, when bush-rangers were supposed to be in the neighbourhood they went out with them themselves, lying out and watching through the long cold nights, and taking their chance of a shot as well as those that were paid for it.
Now there was a Mr.Whitman that had never let go a chance from the start of running their trail with the police, and had more than once given them all they knew to get away.He was a native of the country, like themselves, a first-class horseman and tracker, a hardy, game sort of a chap that thought nothing of being twenty-four hours in the saddle, or sitting under a fence watching for the whole of a frosty night.
Well, he was pretty close to Moran once, who had been out by himself;that close he ran him he made him drop his rifle and ride for his life.
Moran never forgave him for this, and one day when they had all been drinking pretty heavy he managed to persuade Wall, Hulbert, Burke, and Daly to come with him and stick up Whitman's house.
`I sent word to him I'd pay him out one of these fine days,' he drawled out, `and he'll find that Dan Moran can keep his word.'
He picked a time when he knew Whitman was away at another station.
I always thought Moran was not so game as he gave himself out to be.
And I think if he'd had Whitman's steady eyes looking at him, and seeing a pistol in his hand, he wouldn't have shot as straight as he generally did when he was practising at a gum tree.
Anyhow, they laid it out all right, as they thought, to take the place unawares.They'd been drinking at a flash kind of inn no great way off, and when they rode up to the house it seems they were all of 'em three sheets in the wind, and fit for any kind of villainy that came uppermost.As for Moran, he was a devil unchained.
I know what he was.The people in the house that day trembled and shook when they heard the dogs bark and saw five strange horsemen ride through the back gate into the yard.
They'd have trembled a deal more if they'd known what was coming.