“Jes’ so. You’re right every time, Varley,” assented Taffy, brightening up. “Of course not. She’s cavortin’ around with her new husband, and don’t have time to write; but presently she’ll settle down like and send us a regular long ’un; one o’ them kind that makes us bust ourselves a-laughing one minute and want to go for some o’ them fools over there the next. Well, if there ain’t no letter, I’m off home. Not another drop, thank ye, Varley. I know when I’ve had enough,” he concluded, though Varley had not offered him a drink.
Varley smoked on, with his eyes half closed, through the renewed din—for this last piece of audacity on the part of Dog’s Ear was being discussed warmly and with an appropriate accompaniment of fiery language; but though he looked the embodiment of mental and physical ease, there was an under-current of vague anxiety and disquietude running below his outward placidity. Esmeralda had not written for the last six weeks; and notwithstanding the reason which he had given to Taffy for her silence, he was disquieted. She had written, until this break, so regularly, and she had promised to give him a full account of her wedding. He had read a description of it in the Melbourne paper, it is true, but he wanted to read it in her own words, to glean between the lines whether she were happy or not.
“I’m a fanciful fool,” he thought. “I want a change of air—a little rough-and-tumble work somewhere; and I’d better get it or I shall be drifting into melancholy. Happy? Of course she’s happy! Why shouldn’t she be? Married to a man she loves—that’s evident enough; she gives herself away in every letter—and treated like a princess by the family. If they had come the high and haughty business and looked down upon her: but they haven’t, so she says. Happy? Yes, that’s it; she’s too happy to write!” He stifled a sigh as Bill came across the room with his head tied up in a—comparatively—clean dish-cloth. “Well, William, are you ready?”
“Right away, cap’n,” responded Bill. He turned up his eyes at the bandage apologetically. “Any one ’ud think, by the appearance of me, that I’d lost the whole uv my scalp, instead o’ only havin’ one side o’ my hair cut; but don’t let on about it now.” He jerked his head toward Mother Melinda, who, with her arms akimbo, was watching him with a surgeon’s pride. “I’ll wait till I get outside ’fore I takes the blamed thing off. It wouldn’t do to hurt her feelin’s, Varley; she’s as proud of it as if she’d took a leg off me.”
The two men filled up their revolvers and went out quietly. There was no particular peril in the business; the mare, with the intelligence acquired in several similar situations, would remain quiet until her master came for her, and the Dog’s Ear men, knowing that Three Star was on the alert, would stop in their camp for that night at least; but Varley and Bill kept a sharp lookout notwithstanding. They went along in silence for some time, then Bill said, quietly:
“Varley, I didn’t let on before the boys to all I heard them Dog’s Ear chaps talking. You see, some of our boys are a bit young-heady, and ’ud a-opened their mouths too wide, and perhaps spoiled the game.”
“Your wisdom is always supernal, William,” said Varley, absently. “What is it? Is Dog’s Ear going to attack the Melbourne Bank?”
“No,” said Bill, quietly; “but they’re going to ‘put up’ the coach to-morrow.”
For all his nonchalance and sang-froid, Varley was rather startled.
“That’s rather high and lofty tumbling for Dog’s Ear,” he remarked. “Sure?”