第130章

`Well, I'll bet you a new meerschaum that both men are arrested on suspicion before shearing.Of course they'll let them go again; but, you mark my words, they'll be stopped, as well as dozens of others.That will show how close the search will be.'

`I don't care,' says Jim, in his old, obstinate way, which he never put on except very seldom.`I'll go in a month or two -- police or no police.

I'll make for Melbourne if there was an army of soldiers between me and Jeanie.'

We had to settle where the gold was to be hid.After a lot of talk we agreed to keep one bag in a hole in the side of the wall of the cave, and bury the others in the place where we'd found old Mr.Devereux's box.

His treasure had laid many a year safe and sound without anybody touching it, and we thought ours might do the same.Besides, to find it they must get into the Hollow first.So we packed it out bag by bag, and made an ironbark coffin for it, and buried it away there, and put some couch-grass turfs on it.We knew they'd soon grow up, and nobody could tell that it hadn't always been covered up the same as the rest of the old garden.

It felt pretty hard lines to think we shouldn't be able to get away from this lonely place after the life we'd led the last year; but Starlight wasn't often wrong, and we came to the same way of thinking ourselves when we looked at it all round, steady and quiet like.

We'd been a week or ten days all by ourselves, horse-breaking, fishing, and shooting a bit, thinking how strange it was that we should have more than 20,000 Pounds in gold and money and not be able to do anything with it, when dad, sudden like, said he'd go out himself and get some of the newspapers, and perhaps a letter or two if any came.

Starlight laughed at him a bit for being foolhardy, and said we should hear of his being caught and committed for trial.

`Why, they'll know the dog,' says he, `and make him give evidence in court.

I've known that done before now.Inspector Merlin nailed a chap through his dog.'

Father grinned.`I know'd that case -- a sheep-stealing one.

They wanted to make out Brummy was the man as owned the dorg --a remarkable dorg he was, too, and had been seen driving the sheep.'

`Well, what did the dog do? Identify the prisoner, didn't he?'

`Well, the dashed fool of a coolie did.Jumps up as soon as he was brought into court, and whines and scratches at the dock rails and barks, and goes on tremenjus, trying to get at Brummy.'

`How did his master like it?'

`Oh! Brummy? He looked as black as the ace of spades.

He'd have made it hot for that dorg if he could ha' got at him.

But I suppose he forgived him when he came out.'

`Why should he?'

`Because the jury fetched him in guilty without leaving the box, and the judge give him seven years.You wouldn't find this old varmint a-doin' no such foolishness as that.'

Here he looks at Crib, as was lyin' down a good way off, and not letting on to know anything.He saw father's old mare brought up, though, and saddled, and knowed quite well what that meant.He never rode her unless he was going out of the Hollow.

`I believe that dog could stick up a man himself as well as some fellows we know,' says Starlight, `and he'd do it, too, if your father gave him the word.'

While we were taking it easy, and except for the loneliness of it as safe as if we had been out of the country altogether, Moran and the other fellows hadn't quite such a good time of it.They were hunted from pillar to post by the police, who were mad to do something to meet the chaff that was always being cast up to them of having a lot of bush-rangers robbing and shooting all over the country and not being able to take them.

There were some out-of-the-way places enough in the Weddin Mountains, but none like the Hollow, where they could lie quiet and untroubled for weeks together, if they wanted.Besides, they had lost their gold by their own foolishness in not having better pack-horses, and hadn't much to carry on with, and it's not a life that can be worked on the cheap, I can tell you, as we often found out.Money comes easy in our line, but it goes faster still, and a man must never be short of a pound or two to chuck about if he wants to keep his information fresh, and to have people working for him night and day with a will.

So they had some every-day sort of work cut out to keep themselves going, and it took them all their time to get from one part of the country where they were known to some other place where they weren't expected.