“The blanky banker went ratty when he saw my gun,” said Sweet William. “I had to fair yank ’im through the supple-jacks an’ lawyers. It was something horrid—it made my arm ache. At larst I says, ‘Look ’ere, are you goin’ to walk, or am I to shoot you?’ An’ he kept on sayin’, ‘All the gold is on the horse; don’t take it all, please,’ till I felt sick. ‘Up you git,’ I says, an’ I dragged ’im through the bush, and then bli’me if ’e didn’t sit down an’ cough an’ cry. Such dam’ foolishness made me lose patience. I just ‘squeezed’ ’im where he sat.”
“My bloke was the devil to die,” said Garstang. “First I shot him one way, then I shot him another; an’ at larst I had to chiv ’im with the knife, though it was the larst thing I wanted to do.”
“They should all have been ‘squeezed,’” said Dolphin, “and nothing’s easier if you’ve got the knack—noiseless, bloodless, traceless, the only scientific way of doin’ the work.”
“All of which you’ve said before, Dolly.” Sweet William rose and groped his way to the mouth of the cave.
“It’s the blamed horses that bother me,” said Carnac. “We left their carcases too near the track. We should have taken them a mile or more along, and have shoved them over a precipice, down which they might have fallen by accident in the storm. As it is, they’ll be putrid in a fortnight, and make the track impassable.”
“By which time,” said Dolphin, “we shall be out of reach.”
“What about the Bank?” Garstang asked the question almost insolently. “I thought you ’ad such wonderful plans of yer own.”
“The thing’s easy enough,” retorted Dolphin, “but the question is whether it’s worth while. We’ve made a haul to be proud of; never did men have a better streak o’ luck. We’ve taken hundreds of ounces from a strong escort, which we stopped at the right place, just in the right way, so that they couldn’t so much as fire a shot. It would be a crying shame to spoil such a job by bein’ trapped over a paltry wooden Bank.”
“Trapped be sugared!” said Garstang.
“The inference ’ll be”—Sweet William had returned from the cave’s mouth, and took up the conversation where he left it—“everybody with any sense’ll say the escort an’ the banker made orf with the gold—nothin’ but blood’ounds could ever find their bodies.”