The Lost Valley Part 13

"That should about do it," c.u.mshaw remarked, when this was completed.

"I hope so," the other answered curtly. He sprang to the saddle, loosed the reins that had tethered the animal, and setting his spurs deep into its flank galloped up the track for a matter of a hundred yards or so, closely followed by his companion. Then they turned sharply off into the bush, designedly traversing the soft impressionable ground. The heavily-laden horses floundered in the soft soil, and gradually the pace dropped away from a gallop to a canter, and finally to a walk. When nearly two miles of this sort of country had been covered, the two men reined in and dismounted. Next they unloaded the stones from the saddle-bags and hid them carefully in the undergrowth. c.u.mshaw then proceeded to cut his thick blanket into strips, each of about eighteen inches square. There were eight of these strips in all--four he kept himself and the others he handed to his companion.

"It's a smart enough dodge, all right," the man remarked. "The only possible flaw in it is that there might be some gentleman present who's dealt with cattle-duffers in the past. If so, he'd be pretty sure to scent our little game, and block it."

"Let's hope for the best," said Mr. c.u.mshaw, cheerfully, looking up from his work with a smile that even the darkness of the night could not hide. He was systematically wrapping the squares of blankets round the hoofs of his mount and securing them in such a way that they would remain fast even during a wild gallop over rough country. The trick itself was an old one; it had its origin many years previous in Texas and Arizona when the raiding Indians made their horses walk over blankets spread on the ground in order to hide the direction of their retreat. The idea had been adopted and developed by the Australian cattle-duffers to meet the exigencies of the country they worked in. The trick therefore was by no means a new one, and there was just a chance, as the man Jack remarked, that someone might drop to it. But the false hoof-prints were an unprecedented addition that would probably keep the pursuers long enough on the wrong scent to enable the precious pair to "escape" and "cache" their plunder.

It was characteristic of the two men that once they had taken all precautions they quietly dismissed the matter from their minds and rode slowly back to the roadway with scarce a thought for the business in hand. Abel c.u.mshaw would have whistled had he dared; as it was he hummed softly to himself. The moon was now well up in the heavens, and its fitful light creeping through the leafy roof above, made gibbering ghosts of the swaying gums. Mr. Abel c.u.mshaw and his companion, Jack Bradby, had been brought up in the Australian bush, their nerves were as steady as a rock, and where others saw grim visions of fancy they saw only waving bushes and stripped gums. Though the present adventure was their first essay in ranging, both of them had lived by their wits, or rather by others' want of wits, for more years than were good for them.

Singly or together they had run other people's sheep and cattle and made a lucrative, if dishonest, living at the game, and during their visits to the towns had made it a point of warped honor to pay their expenses with the ill-gotten gold of some duller fellow-creature. On top of it all they had a carelessness of life and a free hand with their easily-earned wealth that found them friends wherever they went.

Bradby pulled up suddenly and held up his hand in warning to his companion. Some faint noise had caught his ear, and, excellent bushman that he was, he would not rest content until he had located and defined it. Silently as a shadow he slipped from his saddle and dropped rec.u.mbent on the ground. With one ear to the earth beneath he listened.

He remained in this posture for perhaps a minute and a half, then he rose abruptly and turned to Mr. c.u.mshaw.

"Horses," he said laconically.

"Must be them," Mr. c.u.mshaw replied with almost equal brevity.

Deftly, and without haste of any sort, each man knotted a red and white spotted handkerchief across the lower half of his face, leaving only the eyes and forehead visible. Then each tilted his hat so that the shadow thrown by the brim shrouded the uncovered portion of the face. Mr.

c.u.mshaw, with the amazing simplicity of a conjurer, produced a pair of ugly-looking revolvers from apparent nothingness, while his companion slipped his holsters round so that his weapons were within easy and immediate reach. He did not, however, remount his horse, but threw the reins to Mr. c.u.mshaw, who draped them over his arm in such a way that they did not hamper his movements in the least.

The little group of hors.e.m.e.n, four, or perhaps five in all, clattered down the track as unsuspiciously as a man could wish. They were chatting quite easily, even joyously, of the thousand and one little matters that supplied their daily lives with interest, and nothing must have been further from their thoughts than what actually occurred. The bank that had sent them had departed from all precedent in parcelling out the gold amongst the messengers. It was certainly against the rather strict regulations of the bank, but the man who had instructed them had that contempt for rules and regulations which is the mark of a man destined to rise in the world.

"The expense of sending you," he had said, "is certainly no greater than that of the recognised method of forwarding by coach. The security of my method is even greater as you are not at all open to suspicion."

As a matter of fact, all would have gone well had not one of the chosen messengers been a little too fond of his nightly drink, and more or less inclined to talk when in his cups. True, on this particular evening he had exercised a kind of maudlin caution, but the tactics of Mr. Jack Bradby were of the sort to extract valuable information in the least noticeable way possible, and as a consequence the man, while keeping a strict guard of his tongue, at the same time let fall enough information to satisfy the curiosity of the 'ranger.

The first intimation the little cavalcade had of the presence of the knights of the road was when a shadow moved out from behind a huge gum and a clear resounding voice invited them to halt or take the consequences. With one accord the riders pulled up, one man swore violently, and the hand of another dropped round to his belt in a hesitant manner. But Mr. Jack Bradby had eyes like an eagle, for he cried sharply, "Put your hands up instantly!"

All the men shot their hands skywards with a precision that could not have been bettered by weeks of training.

"You look ever so much better like that," said Mr. Jack Bradby pleasantly. "Just keep still. I'd hate to make corpses of any of you--you all look so much better alive."

The humor of this was apparently lost on the captured ones, for they received it in silence, much to Mr. Bradby's disgust.

"Laugh when I crack a joke!" he roared. "Laugh, all of you, d.a.m.n you!"

Somebody giggled in a half-hearted manner.

"That's no sort of a laugh," snorted Mr. Bradby. "When I say laugh, I mean laugh. I don't want you to bubble like that jacka.s.s did." He indicated the giggler with one of his ugly-looking revolvers. "Now laugh altogether as if you meant it. One, two, three; off you go!"

They all roared at that, but there was a lack of enthusiasm in their voices. Mr. Bradby, however, pa.s.sed that over and proceeded to the business of the evening.

"Now please keep your hands in the same position," Mr. Bradby continued.

"You've got quite a lot of valuables in those saddle-bags of yours, and I'm going to annex them. And don't any of you move a hand or foot or you'll be shot before you can say 'Jack Robinson.' There's men in plenty in among those trees, so don't play any hanky-panky tricks if you value your lives."

The scared hors.e.m.e.n with one accord glanced toward the trees that fringed the road. Mr. Bradby had stage-managed the affair with such consummate skill that they could only see the dim forms of several horses. The shadows were cast so that it was impossible to say how many there were; as far as the captives were concerned a regiment of cavalry might have been ma.s.sed behind the trees for all they could say to the contrary. They had a feeling that unseen eyes watched them and invisible firearms covered their every movement. A solitary ray of moonlight, glinting for an instant on one of c.u.mshaw's revolvers lent color to this suggestion, so like wise men they surrendered to the inevitable and allowed the explosive Mr. Bradby to relieve them first of all of their weapons, and, when he had "drawn their teeth," as he succinctly expressed it, to rifle their saddle-bags for the little packages of gold that it was their mission to guard with their lives. Life at all times is dearer than gold, and the men realised that they were in a trap from which there was only one way of escape. They submitted meekly to their fate, saw the saddle-bags rifled without a word of protest, and, deceived by the shadows, watched what they took to be half a dozen men at least loading up with the gold. It speaks well for the dominant personality of Mr. Bradby that no one seemed to have suspected that only two men were concerned in the hold-up, despite the fact that they really only saw one man and the shadowy outline of another.

"Turn round, all of you!" Mr. Bradby commanded when the transfer had been completed. "Turn round and keep your hands in the air!"

Obediently, albeit clumsily, since they could not use their hands, the hors.e.m.e.n wheeled their mounts around, and Mr. Bradby surveyed the scene with satisfaction.

"You all look nice from the rear," he remarked. "Some of you've got real fine backs. Just you keep like that now and see what the fairies'll send you."

So silently that he might have been a disembodied spirit he turned on his heel, seized the reins Mr. c.u.mshaw threw him and vaulted into the saddle. As softly as two shadows the horses melted into the night, their m.u.f.fled hoofs making no sound on the hard earth.

Ten minutes later one of the hors.e.m.e.n, grown tired of the unearthly inaction and suspecting something of what had happened, slewed his head round very cautiously. In a flash he realised the position and imparted his discovery to his companions.

"We can't follow them," the leader said. "We're unarmed. Furthermore we've got no idea which way they went. The only thing we can do is to get back to the nearest police station and report."

The man who had first discovered the absence of the bushrangers had been employing his time in examining the ground for traces of the gang, and very shortly he came across the tracks that the precious pair had made earlier in the evening. An exclamation from him drew the others to the spot. By the flickering light of a match they inspected the hoof-marks, and then the leader of the party gave vent to a snort of disgust.

"There's only two of them," he said. "What fools we've been!"

"They completely took us in," remarked another member of the party.

"That's so," agreed a third, "but we can't make people understand. If we tell them how two men stuck us up, we're going to look a lot of goats. I For one think we'd better keep the number to ourselves, or, better still, we might say that there was a big party of them."

One or two demurred at this, but the bulk of the party knew well the ridicule that the truth would attach to them, and the result was that between them a story carrying the marks of probability was invented, and, thus armed against the laughter of the State, the party set out for the nearest town.

In the meanwhile Bradby and c.u.mshaw had doubled back on their tracks and were heading for the Grampians. Though neither of them had explored the mountains before, they were quite satisfied from what they knew of the general formation of the country that there were gullies, even valleys, where an army might lie hidden. So confident were the two adventurers that there was no danger of pursuit that they did not press forward at anything like a reasonable speed. They took things easy. Somewhere about two o'clock in the morning they halted and removed the blanket-pads from their horses' hoofs. Mr. c.u.mshaw was just going to throw them into the bushes when Mr. Bradby stopped him.

"Don't do that," he said, "we'd better destroy them outright."

"How?" queried Abel.

"Burn 'em, I should say," Mr. Bradby answered. "You make a good job of it, and you don't leave anything behind. If you throw them away someone's sure to find them just when it's most awkward for you. No, Abel, burn them and hurry up about it."

So it came about that presently a tiny spot of light glowed like a red warning beacon from the lower slopes of the range. A lonely prospector, a few miles to the east, saw the spark and wondered at it. He knew that no one lived in that part of the country. The more he thought of it the more it puzzled him, though with the morning there came an unexpected solution.

CHAPTER II.

THE PURSUIT.

A body of mounted troopers left Ararat an hour or so before daylight the next morning, and by seven o'clock had reached the scene of the robbery.

They had with them a capable black tracker who had figured in recent events in the Wombat Ranges. He was a silent individual who answered to the name of "Jacky," a name that seems to be the heritage of all blacks who serve in the police force. He quickly picked up the false scent, and the party turned east. It wasn't until the horses stumbled over the heap of stones that some brilliant intellect dropped to the trick that had been played on them. Then, with the better part of an hour to the bad, the party returned to the starting-point of the trail.

"Seems to me," the sergeant in charge remarked to his subordinate, "that they've laid this trail with a good reason. Now if a man wanted to put you on the wrong track, what would you think he'd naturally do?"

"Send us in the opposite direction," said the other promptly.

"Quite so," said the sergeant. "Now the false trail leads east, so it's only reasonable to suppose that they've gone west."