Robbery under Arms Part 68

When I came to I was lying on my blankets in a different cell, as I could see by the shape of it. The irons didn't rattle when I moved. I was surprised when I looked and saw they were took off. Bit by bit it all came back to me. I was not to be hanged. My life was saved, if it was worth saving, by the two or three good things we'd done in our time, and almost, I thought, more for poor old Jim's sake than my own.

Was I glad or sorry now it was all over? I hardly knew. For a week or two I felt as if they'd better have finished me off when I was ready and ha' done with me, but after a while I began to feel different. Then the gaoler talked to me a bit. He never said much to prisoners, and what he said he meant.

'Prisoner Marston,' says he, 'you'd better think over your situation and don't mope. Make up your mind like a man. You may have friends that you'd like to live for. Pull yourself together and face your sentence like a man. You're a young man now, and you won't be an old one when you're let out. If your conduct is uniformly good you'll be out in twelve years. Settle yourself to serve that--and you're a lucky man to have no more--and you may have some comfort in your life yet.'

Then he went out. He didn't wait to see what effect it had on me. If I wasn't a fool, he thought to himself, I must take it in; if I was, nothing would do me any good.

I took his advice, and settled myself down to think it over. It was a good while--a weary lot of years to wait, year by year--but, still, if I got out in twelve years I should not be so out and out broke down after all--not much over forty, and there's a deal of life for a man sometimes after that.

And then I knew that there would be one that would be true to me anyhow, that would wait for me when I went out, and that would not be too proud to join in her life with mine, for all that had come and gone. Well, this might give me strength. I don't think anything else could, and from that hour I made up my mind to tackle it steady and patient, to do the best I could, and to work out my sentence, thankful for the mercy that had been showed me, and, if ever a man was in this world, resolved to keep clear of all cross ways for the future.

So I began to steady myself and tried to bear it the best way I could.

Other men were in for long sentences, and they seemed to be able to keep alive, so why shouldn't I? Just at the first I wasn't sure whether I could. Year after year to be shut up there, with the gra.s.s growin' and the trees wavin' outside, and the world full of people, free to walk or ride, to work or play, people that had wives and children, and friends and relations--it seemed awful. That I should be condemned to live in this shut-up tomb all those long, weary years, and there was nothing else for it. I couldn't eat or sleep at first, and kept starting up at night, thinking they was coming for me to carry me off to the gallows.

Then I'd dream that Jim and Starlight was alive, and that we'd all got out of gaol and were riding through the bush at night to the Hollow again. Then I'd wake up and know they were dead and I was here. Time after time I've done that, and I was that broken down and low that I burst out crying like a child.

Chapter 52

The months went on till I began to think it was a long time since anything had been heard of father. I didn't expect to have a letter or anything, but I knew he must take a run outside now and again; and so sure as he did it would come to my ears somehow.

One day I had a newspaper pa.s.sed in to me. It was against the regulations, but I did get it for all that, and this was the first thing I saw:--

STRANGE DISCOVERY IN THE TURON DISTRICT.

A remarkable natural formation, leading to curious results, was last week accidentally hit upon by a party of prospectors, and by them made known to the police of the district. It may tend to solve the doubts which for the last few years have troubled the public at large with respect to the periodical disappearance of a certain gang of bush-rangers now broken up.

Accident led the gold miners, who were anxious to find a practicable track to the gullies at the foot of Nulla Mountain, to observe a narrow winding way apparently leading over the brow of the precipice on its western face. To their surprise, half hidden by a fallen tree, they discovered a difficult but practicable track down a gully which finally opened out into a broad well-gra.s.sed valley of considerable extent, in which cattle and horses were grazing.

No signs of human habitation were at first visible, but after a patient search a cave in the eastern angle of the range was discovered. Fires had been lighted habitually near the mouth, and near a log two saddles and bridles--long unused--lay in the tall gra.s.s. Hard by was stretched the body of a man of swarthy complexion. Upon examination the skull was found to be fractured, as if by some blunt instrument. A revolver of small size lay on his right side.

Proceeding to the interior of the cave, which had evidently been used as a dwelling for many years past, they came upon the corpse of another man, in a sitting posture, propped up against the wall. One arm rested upon an empty spirit-keg, beside which were a tin pannikin and a few rude cooking utensils. At his feet lay the skeleton of a dog. The whole group had evidently been dead for a considerable time. Further search revealed large supplies of clothes, saddlery, arms, and ammunition--all placed in recesses of the cave--besides other articles which would appear to have been deposited in that secure receptacle many years since.

As may be imagined, a large amount of interest, and even excitement, was caused when the circ.u.mstances, as reported to the police, became generally known. A number of our leading citizens, together with many of the adjoining station holders, at once repaired to the spot. No difficulty was felt in identifying the bodies as those of Ben Marston, the father of the two bush-rangers of that name, and of Warrigal, the half-caste follower always seen in attendance upon the chief of the gang, the celebrated Starlight.

How the last members of this well-known, long-dreaded gang of freebooters had actually perished can only be conjectured, but taking the surrounding circ.u.mstances into consideration, and the general impression abroad that Warrigal was the means of putting the police upon the track of Richard Marston, which led indirectly to the death of his master and of James Marston, the most probable solution would seem to be that, after a deep carouse, the old man had taxed Warrigal with his treachery and brained him with the American axe found close to the body.

He had apparently then shot himself to avoid a lingering death, the bullet found in his body having been probably fired by the half-caste as he was advancing upon him axe in hand.

The dog, well known by the name of Crib, was the property and constant companion of Ben Marston, the innocent accomplice in many of his most daring stock-raids. Faithful unto the end, with the deep, uncalculating love which shames so often that of man, the dumb follower had apparently refused to procure food for himself, and pined to death at the feet of his dead master. Though the philanthropist may regret the untimely and violent end of men whose courage and energy fitted them for better things, it cannot be denied that the gain to society far exceeds the loss.

When the recesses of the Hollow were fully explored, traces of rude but apparently successful gold workings were found in the creeks which run through this romantic valley--long as invisible as the fabled gold cities of Mexico.

We may venture to a.s.sert that no great time will be suffered to elapse ere the whole of the alluvial will be taken up, and the Terrible Hollow, which some of the older settlers a.s.sert to be its real name, will re-echo with the sound of pick and shovel; perhaps to be the means of swelling those escorts which its former inhabitants so materially lessened.

With regard to the stock pasturing in the valley, a puzzling problem presented itself when they came to be gathered up and yarded. The adjoining settlers who had suffered from the depredations of the denizens of the Hollow were gladly expectant of the recovery of animals of great value. To their great disappointment, only a small number of the very aged bore any brand which could be sworn to and legally claimed. The more valuable cattle and horses, evidently of the choicest quality and the highest breeding, resembled very closely individuals of the same breed stolen from the various proprietors. But they were either unbranded or branded with a letter and numbers to which no stock-owners in the district could lay claim.

Provoking, as well as perplexing, was this unique state of matters--wholly without precedent. For instance, Mr. Rouncival and his stud-groom could almost have sworn to the big slas.h.i.+ng brown mare, the image of the long-lost celebrity Termagant, with the same crooked blaze down the face, the same legs, the same high croup and peculiar way of carrying her head. She corresponded exactly in age to the date on which the grand thoroughbred mare, just about to bring forth, had disappeared from Buntagong. No reasonable doubt existed as to the ident.i.ty of this valuable animal, followed as she was by several of her progeny, equally aristocratic in appearance. Still, as these interesting individuals had never been seen by their rightful owners, it was impossible to prove a legal t.i.tle.

The same presumptive certainty and legal incompleteness existed concerning Mr. Bowe's short-horns (as he averred) and Mr. Dawson's Devons.

'Thou art so near and yet so far,'

as a provoking stock-rider hummed. Finally, it was decided by the officials in charge to send the whole collection to the public pound, when each proprietor might become possessed of his own, with a good and lawful t.i.tle in addition--for 'a consideration'--and to the material benefit of the Government coffers.

So it was this way the poor old Hollow was dropped on to, and the well-hidden secret blown for ever and ever. Well, it had been a good plant for us and them as had it before our time. I don't expect there'll ever be such a place again, take it all round.

And that was the end of father! Poor old dad! game to the last. And the dog, too!--wouldn't touch bit or sup after the old man dropped. Just like Crib that was! Often and often I used to wonder what he saw in father to be so fond of him. He was about the only creature in the wide world that was fond of dad--except mother, perhaps, when she was young.

She'd rather got wore out of her feelings for him, too. But Crib stuck to him to his end--faithful till death, as some of them writing coves says.

And Warrigal! I could see it all, sticking out as plain as a fresh track after rain. He'd come back to the Hollow, like a fool--in spite of me warning him--or because he had nowhere else to go. And the first time dad had an extra gla.s.s in his head he tackled him about giving me away and being the means of the other two's death. Then he'd got real mad and run at him with the axe. Warrigal had fired as he came up, and hit him too; but couldn't stop him in the rush. Dad got in at him, and knocked his brains out there and then. Afterwards, he'd sat down and drank himself pretty well blind; and then, finding the pains coming on him, and knowing he couldn't live, finished himself off with his own revolver.

It was just the way I expected he would make an ending. He couldn't do much all alone in his line. The reward was a big one, and there would be always some one ready to earn it. Jim and Starlight were gone, and I was as good as dead. There wasn't much of a call for him to keep alive.

Anyhow, he died game, and paid up all scores, as he said himself.

I don't know that there's much more for me to say. Here I am boxed up, like a scrubber in a pound, year after year--and years after that--for I don't know how long. However, O my G.o.d! how ever shall I stand it? Here I lie, half my time in a place where the sun never s.h.i.+nes, locked up at five o'clock in my cell, and the same door with never a move in it till six o'clock next morning. A few hours' walk in a prison yard, with a warder on the wall with a gun in his hand overhead. Then locked up again, Sundays and week-days, no difference. Sometimes I think they'd better have hanged me right off. If I feel all these things now I've only been a few months doing my sentence, how about next year, and the year after that, and so on, and so on? Why, it seems as if it would mount up to more than a man's life--to ten lives--and then to think how easy it might all have been saved.

There's only one thing keeps me alive; only for that I'd have starved to death for want of having the heart to eat or drink either, or else have knocked my brains out against the wall when one of them low fits came over me. That one thing's the thought of Gracey Storefield.

She couldn't come to me, she wrote, just yet, but she'd come within the month, and I wasn't to fret about her, because whether it was ten years or twenty years if she was alive she'd meet me the day after I was free, let who will see her. I must be brave and keep up my spirits for her sake and Aileen's, who, though she was dead to the world, would hear of my being out, and would always put my name in her prayers. Neither she nor I would be so very old, and we might have many years of life reasonably happy yet in spite of all that had happened. So the less I gave way and made myself miserable, the younger I should look and feel when I came out. She was sure I repented truly of what I had done wrong in the past; and she for one, and George--good, old, kind George--had said he would go bail that I would be one of the squarest men in the whole colony for the future. So I was to live on, and hope and pray G.o.d to lighten our lot for her sake.

It must be years and years since that time as I last wrote about. Awful long and miserable the time went at first; now it don't go so slow somehow. I seemed to have turned a corner. How long is it? It must be a hundred years. I have had different sorts of feelings. Sometimes I feel ashamed to be alive. I think the man that knocked his head against the wall of his cell the day he was sentenced and beat his brains out in this very gaol had the best of it. Other times I take things quite easy, and feel as if I could wait quite comfortable and patient-like till the day came. But--will it? Can it ever come that I shall be a free man again?

People have come to see me a many times, most of them the first year or two I was in. After that they seemed to forget me, and get tired of coming. It didn't make much odds.

But one visitor I had regular after the first month or two. Gracey, poor Gracey, used to come and see me twice a year. She said it wouldn't do her or me any good to come oftener, and George didn't want her to. But them two times she always comes, and, if it wasn't for that, I don't think I'd ever have got through with it. The worst of it was, I used to be that low and miserable after she went, for days and days after, that it was much as I could do to keep from giving in altogether. After a month was past I'd begin to look forward to the next time.

When I'd done over eleven years--eleven years! how did I ever do it? but the time pa.s.sed, and pa.s.sed somehow--I got word that they that I knew of was making a try to see if I couldn't be let out when I'd done twelve years. My regular sentence was fifteen, and little enough too. Anyhow, they knock off a year or two from most of the long-sentence men's time, if they've behaved themselves well in gaol, and can show a good conduct ticket right through.

Well, I could do that. I was too low and miserable to fight much when I went in; besides, I never could see the pull of kicking up rows and giving trouble in a place like that. They've got you there fast enough, and any man that won't be at peace himself, or let others be, is pretty sure to get the worst of it. I'd seen others try it, and never seen no good come of it. It's like a dog on the chain that growls and bites at all that comes near him. A man can take a sapling and half kill him, and the dog never gets a show unless he breaks his chain, and that don't happen often.

Well, I'd learned carpentering and had a turn at mat-making and a whole lot of other things. They kept me from thinking, as I said before, and the neater I did 'em and the more careful I worked the better it went with me. As for my mats, I came quite to be talked about on account of 'em. I drew a regular good picture of Rainbow, and worked it out on a mat with different coloured thrums, and the number of people who came to see that mat, and the notice they took of it, would surprise any one.

When my twelve years was within a couple of months or so of being up I began to hear that there was a deal of in-and-out sort of work about my getting my freedom. Old George Storefield and Mr. Falkland--both of 'em in the Upper House--and one or two more people that had some say with the Government, was working back and edge for me. There was a party on the other side that wasn't willing as I should lose a day or an hour of my sentence, and that made out I ought to have been hanged 'right away', as old Arizona Bill would have said, when I was first taken. Well, I don't blame any of 'em for that; but if they could have known the feelings of a man that's done a matter of twelve years, and thinks he might--yes, might--smell the fresh air and feel the gra.s.s under his feet in a week or two--well, they'd perhaps consider a bit.

Whatever way it came out I couldn't say, but the big man of the Government people at that time--the Minister that had his say in all these sort of things--took it into his head that I'd had about enough of it, if I was to be let out at all; that the steel had been pretty well taken out of me, and that, from what he knew of my people and so on, I wasn't likely to trouble the Government again. And he was right. All I wanted was to be let out a pardoned man, that had done bad things, and helped in worse; but had paid--and paid dear, G.o.d knows--for every pound he'd got crooked and every day he'd wasted in cross work. If I'd been sent back for them three years, I do r'aly believe something of dad's old savage blood would have come uppermost in me, and I'd have turned reckless and revengeful like to my life's end.

Anyhow, as I said before, the Minister--he'd been into the gaol and had a look once or twice--made up his mind to back me right out; and he put it so before the Governor that he gave an order for my pardon to be made out, or for me to be discharged the day my twelve years was up, and to let off the other three, along of my good behaviour in the gaol, and all the rest of it.

This leaked out somehow, and there was the deuce's own barney over it.