CHAPTER VII
OBY AND HIS SYSTEM: THE MOUCHER’S CALENDAR
One dark night, as I was walking on a lonely road, I kicked against something, and but just saved myself from a fall. It was an intoxicated man lying at full length. As a rule, it is best to let such people alone; but it occurred to me that the mail-cart was due; with two horses harnessed tandem-fashion, and travelling at full speed, the mail would probably go over him. So I seized the fellow by the collar and dragged him out of the way. Then he sat up, and asked in a very threatening tone who I was. I mentioned my name: he grunted, and fell back on the turf, where I left him.
The incident passed out of my mind, when one afternoon a labourer called, asking for me in a mysterious manner, and refusing to communicate his business to any one else. When admitted, he produced a couple of cock pheasants from under his coat, the tail feathers much crumpled, but otherwise in fine condition. These he placed on the table, remarking, “I ain’t forgot as you drawed I out of the raud thuck night.” I made him understand that such presents were too embarrassing; but he seemed anxious to do “summat,” so I asked him to find me a few ferns and rare plants.
This he did from time to time; and thus a species of acquaintanceship grew up, and I learned all about him. He was always called “Oby” (i.e. Obadiah), and was the most determined poacher of a neighbouring district—a notorious fighting man—hardened against shame, an Ishmaelite openly contemning authority and yet not insensible to kindness. I give his history in his own language—softening only the pronunciation, that would otherwise be unintelligible.
“I lives with my granny in Thorney-lane: it be outside the village. My mother be married agen, you see, to the smith: her have got a cottage as belongs to her. My brother have got a van and travels the country; and sometimes I and my wife goes with him. I larned to set up a wire when I went to plough when I were a boy, but never took to it regular till I went a-navigating [navvying] and seed what a spree it were.
“There ain’t no such chaps for poaching as they navigators in all England: I means where there be a railway a-making. I’ve knowed forty of ’em go out together on a Sunday, and every man had a dog, and some two; and good dogs too—lots of ’em as you wouldn’t buy for ten quid. They used to spread out like, and sweep the fields as clean as the crownd of your hat. Keepers weren’t no good at all, and besides they never knowed which place us was going to make for. One of the chaps gave I a puppy, and he growed into the finest greyhound as you’d find in a day’s walk. The first time I was took up before the bench I had to go to gaol, because the contractor had broke and the works was stopped, so that my mates hadn’t no money to pay the fine.
“The dog was took away home to granny by my butty [comrade], but one of the gentlemen as seed it in the court sent his groom over and got it off the old woman for five pound. She thought if I hadn’t the hound I should give it up, and she come and paid me out of gaol. It was a wonder as I didn’t break her neck; only her was a good woman, you see, to I. But I wouldn’t have parted with that hound for a quart-full of sovereigns. Many’s a time I’ve seed his name—they changed his name, of course—in the papers for winning coursing matches. But we let that gent as bought him have it warm; we harried his pheasants and killed the most of ’em.
“After that I came home, and took to it regular. It ain’t no use unless you do it regular. If a man goes out into the fields now and then chance-like he don’t get much, and is most sure to be caught—very likely in the place of somebody else the keepers were waiting for and as didn’t come. I goes to work every day the same as the rest, only I always take piece-work, which I can come to when I fancy, and stay as late in the evening as suits me with a good excuse. As I knows navigating, I do a main bit of draining and water-furrowing, and I gets good wages all the year round, and never wants for a job. You see, I knows more than the fellows as have never been at nothing but plough.
“The reason I gets on so well poaching is because I’m always at work out in the fields, except when I goes with the van. I watches everything as goes on, and marks the hare’s tracks and the rabbit buries, and the double mounds and little copses as the pheasants wanders off to in the autumn. I keeps a nation good look-out after the keeper and his men, and sees their dodges—which way they walks, and how they comes back sudden and unexpected on purpose. There’s mostly one about with his eyes on me—when they sees me working on a farm they puts a man special to look after me. I never does nothing close round where I’m at work, so he waits about a main bit for nothing.
“You see by going out piece-work I visits every farm in the parish. The other men they works for one farmer for two or three or maybe twenty years; but I goes very nigh all round the place—a fortnight here and a week there, and then a month somewhere else. So I knows every hare in the parish, and all his runs and all the double mounds and copses, and the little covers in the corners of the fields. When I be at work on one place I sets my wires about half a mile away on a farm as I ain’t been working on for a month, and where the keeper don’t keep no special look-out now I be gone. As I goes all round, I knows the ways of all the farmers, and them as bides out late at night at their friends’, and they as goes to bed early; and so I knows what paths to follow and what fields I can walk about in and never meet nobody.