The others protested they didn’t need help. “Yes, ye do,” said Dan. “Ye could never put him in yerself.” The men said they’d show him if they couldn’t, and Blazes, who had listened in some bewilderment to the argument, found himself seized, hoisted up and carried, kicking violently, to the cells. There were three of these, and all the other prisoners were crammed in the first. Each had obligingly gone to sleep as soon as he was shut in, and roused too late as each newcomer intruded.
“Wait a bit, Ned,” said Dan, as the men were leaving the station. “Hadn’t ye better bring back a bottle for Blazes? He’ll want a drink, an’ ye wouldn’t see a mate do a perish.”
Ned went off post haste for a bottle, and when he brought it back, Dan ushered him into Blazes’ cell and shut them both in.
“Four,” said Dan. “If I could get that Darby in I’d be aisy in me mind. He’s too big an’ bullocky to handle be force.”
A fight between Dolly Grey and “Cocky” Smith gave him his next chance. Dolly Grey was climbing on the bar and calling for cheers for Harrow. “Harrow on th’ Hill,” he cried, waving a glass and showering beer in circles, “Harrow on th’ Hill f’rever.” Cocky Smith objected, saying he was a farmer and had ploughed and harrowed before Dolly Grey was pupped. “Ye couldn’t harrer no ’ills roun’ ’ere,” he asserted positively. “They’re that steep th’ harrer ’ud fall off ’em, t’ say nothing o’ bein’ too stony for a plough t’ touch.”
“Fines’ Hill in th’ worl’,” said Dolly, angrily. “Don’ you ’nsult Harrow—you never saw Harrow—y’ wouldn’t know Harrow if....” Cocky Smith violently cursed him and all his harrows together, and Dolly attacked him instantly.
“Now ye wouldn’t let that poor lad be gettin’ the pretty face of him spoilt,” insinuated Dan, and with very little persuasion he had the men carrying the pair to the cells.
“Six,” said Dan. “Two at a time’ll soon thin ’em out.” He caught another of the station men by the shoulder as he left the station, pulled him inside and shut the outer door quickly. He was the last man going out, and the others never missed him, and Dan was too expert for a single man to give him more than a slight scuffle.
“Seven,” he said. “If only I had Darby the Bull I cud handle the rest.”
But Darby refused to be caught. The more he drank the more stolid and bull-like he became, and he clung to the others like a leech. “Can’t leave ’em,” he said to Dan’s persuasions to come and have a quiet drink, and come and see something he had to show him, and that a girl outside wanted to speak to him. “Can’t leave ’em. Y’ see I’m lookin’ arter ’em. They might get drunk an’ get into trouble wi’ the polis.”