Rolf Boldrewood

“ There's no disgrace in yielding now.'
`Come on!' says Starlight; `don't waste your breath! There's no man here will be taken alive.'
With that, Goring lets drive and sends a bullet that close by my head I put my hand up to feel the place. All the rest bangs away, black tracker and all. I didn't see Sir Ferdinand's pistol smoke. He and Starlight seemed to wait. Then Jim and I fires steady. One trooper drops badly hit, and my man's horse fell like a log and penned his rider under him, which was pretty nigh as good. ”

“ Pretty well settled it came to be amongst us that we should be well into Queensland before the police were handy. Starlight and Jim were having a pitch about the best way to get aboard one of these pearling craft, and how jolly it would be. The captains didn't care two straws what sort of passengers they took aboard so long as they had the cash and were willing to give a hand when they were wanted.
We were just walking towards the horses to make a fresh start, when Starlight puts up his hand. We all listened. There was no mistaking the sound we heard—horses at speed, and mounted men at that. ”

“ He had his rifle on his hip, but he never moved. There he stood, with his hand on the mane of the old horse. `Keep back if you're wise, Goring,' says he, as quiet and steady as if he'd been cattle-drafting. `I don't want to have your blood on my head; but if you must——'
Goring had taken so many men in his day that he was got over confident-like. He thought Starlight would give in at the last moment or miss him in the rush. My right arm was broken, and now that Jim was down we might both be took, which would be a great crow for the police. ”

“ The overseer was a reasonable sort of man, and I found old George had been as good as his word, and left word if a couple of men like me and Starlight came up we were to be put on with the next mob of cattle that were going to Queensland. He did a store cattle trade with the far-out squatters that were stocking up new country in Queensland, and it paid him very well, as nearly everything did that he touched. We were to find our own horses and be paid so much a week—three pounds, I think—and so on. ”

“ We didn't do badly after all, for we struck the main road at daylight and made out that we were thirty miles the other side of Cunnamulla, and in the right direction. The worst of it was, like all short cuts and night riding, we'd taken about twice as much out of our horses as we need have done if we'd been certain of our line.
`This ought to be Murrynebone Creek,' says Starlight, `by the look of it,' when we came to a goodish broad bit of water. `The crossing place is boggy, so they told me at the hotel. We may as well pull up for a spell. ”

“ We're both changed a bit. You look pretty fresh on it. A woman loses her looks sooner than a man when she goes to the bad. And Jim too,' she goes on; `only to fancy poor old Jim turning up here too! One would think you'd put it up to meet at the township on some plant of that sort.'
It was Kate, sure enough! How in the world did ever she get here? I knew she'd left the Turon, and that old Mullockson had dropped a lot of his money in a big mining company he'd helped to float, and that never turned out gold enough to pay for the quicksilver in the first crushing. ”

“ The cattle, of course, couldn't travel very fast; ten or twelve miles a day was enough for them. I could have drowned myself in the creeks as we went crawling along sometimes, and I that impatient to get forward. Eighty miles it was from Cunnamulla to the Queensland border. Once we were over that we'd have to be arrested on warrant, and there were lots of chaps, like us, that were `wanted', on the far-out north stations. Once we sighted the waters of the Warrego we should feel ourselves more than half free.
Then there was Jim, poor old Jim! ”

“ So a lot of police were telegraphed for, and the Bathurst superintendent came down, all in a hurry, to the Turon, and in the papers nothing went down but telegrams and yarns about bush-rangers. They didn't know what the country was coming to; all the sober going people wishing they'd never got an ounce of gold in Australia, and every little storekeeper along the line that had £100 in his cash-box hiding it every night and afraid of seeing us ride up every time the dogs barked.
All the time we were heading for Cunnamulla, and leaving New South Wales behind us hand over hand. ”

“ He took out his pipe, but somehow it wouldn't light. `Good-bye, Crib,' says I. The old dog looked at me for a bit, wagged his tail, and then went and sat between dad's knees. I took my horse and rode away slowish. I felt all dead and alive like when I got near the turn in the track. I looked back and seen the dog and him just the same. I started both horses then. I never set eyes on him again. Poor old dad!
I wasn't very gay for a bit, but I had a good horse under me, another alongside, a smartish lot of cash in notes and gold, some bank deposits too, and all the world before me. ”

“ I tell you, Dick, it was heaven on earth. No wonder it regular broke my heart to leave it.'
`We're close up to the township now,' says I. `This wire fence and the painted gate ain't more than a couple of miles off, that chap said at the inn. I wish there was a fire-stick in it, and I'd never gone inside a door of it. However, that says nothing. We've got to meet Starlight somehow, and there's no use in riding in together. You go in first, and I'll take a wheel outside the house and meet you in the road a mile or two ahead. Where's your pistol? ”

“ Just as he said this the trooper that was underneath the dead horse crawls from under him, the off side, and rests his rifle on his wither. Starlight had just mounted when every rifle and pistol in the two parties was fired at one volley. We had drawn closer to one another, and no one seemed to think of cover.
Rainbow rears up, gives one spring, and falls backward with a crash. ”

“ We made it all right before we left the Turon. All the police in the country is looking for us on the wrong road, and will be for a week or two yet.'
Then I told him about Aileen putting Sir Ferdinand on the wrong lay, and he said what a clever girl she was, and had as much pluck and sense as two or three men. `A deal more than we've ever showed, Dick,' says he, `and that's not saying much either.'
He laughed in his quiet way when he heard about Starlight's advertisement in the `Turon Star', and said it was just like him. ”

“ Somehow I've had a notion coming over me this good while as my time ain't going to be long. It don't make no odds, neither. Life ain't no great chop to a man like me, not when he gets the wrong side o' sixty, anyhow. ”