LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE [“POOR CHUMMY BRISTLED LIKE A PORCUPINE”] Frontispiece [“WARRIGAL WAS BAGGED HIMSELF”] 18 [“THE BLACK FELLOWS WERE IN A VERY SAVAGE MOOD”] 35 [“ON THE ROCKY WALL A RED HAND”] 40 [“THE SNAKES’ CORROBBOREE”] 62 [“H.M. DICK-A-DICK, KING OF THE POSSUM TRIBE”] 72 [“THE RUSHING FIRE WAS NOW STEERING STRAIGHT AT THEM”] 92 [“THEY FOUND THE FARMER CLINGING TO THE CHIMNEY”] 112 [“A ROUGH WOODEN CROSS SHOWED THEM A BUSH GRAVE”] 126 [“THE BLACKS RAISED A WILD HOWL AND FLED”] 212 [“MEN ON HORSEBACK WITH SADDLE-BAGS AND PISTOLS”] 216
I.
VENUS AND WARRIGAL.
“The impudent scoundrel! Just look at this, mamma. I should like to see him at it,” exclaimed Sydney Lawson in great wrath, as he handed his mother a very dirty note which a shepherd had brought home. On coarse, crumpled grocer’s paper these words were written in pencil: “Master sidney i Want your Mare the chesnit with the white starr soe You Send her to 3 Mile flat first thing Tomorrer Or i Shall Have to cum an Fetch Her.—Warrigal.”
“Sam says,” Sydney went on in rising rage, “that the fellow had the cheek to give it him just down by the slip-panels. He rode up to Sam and Paddy Fury as coolly as if he was coming up to spend the night at the house. If the great hulking fellows had a mite of pluck, they’d have knocked him off his horse, instead of taking orders from a chap like that. Paddy is fond enough of bragging about his foightin’ when there’s nobody to fight. But they’re like all the people about here; three parts of them funk the bushrangers, and the rest are in league with them. He may well call himself Warrigal, the sneaking dingo! He wouldn’t have been game to talk about sticking us up, if he hadn’t known father was away. Send him my Venus! Mr. Warrigal must have gone cranky.”
Sydney Lawson, who made this indignant speech at the tea-table of the Wonga-Wonga station (and almost made the hot potato-cake jump off the table with the thumps he gave it), was a tall, slim lad of fourteen. He and his mother had been left in charge of the station, whilst his father took a mob of cattle overland to Port Phillip. Sydney was very proud of having the key of the store, counting in the sheep, peppering mangled calves with strychnine to poison the native dogs that had mangled them, and riding about all day cracking his stock-whip, heading back store-bullocks that seemed inclined to make a rush at him, looking after the men, and when meat was wanted, driving the beast into the stock-yard himself, and shooting it with his own gun. Sydney thought himself a man now, and was very angry that Warrigal should think he could be frightened “like a baby.”
This Warrigal was a bushranger, who, with one or two mates, wandered about in that part of New South Wales, doing pretty much as he liked. They stopped the mail, “bailed up” dray-men and horsemen on the road by the two and three dozen together; “stuck up” solitary stores, and publics, and stations, and once had been saucy enough to stick up a whole township. The police couldn’t get hold of them. Some people said that the troopers were too lazy, and some that they were too cowardly. The truth was that the troopers did not know the bush like the bushrangers, and could not help themselves, as they could, to fresh horses when the ones they were riding were knocked up; and, besides, the bushrangers had “bush telegraphs”—spies who let them know where it was safe to rob, and did all they could to put the troopers on false scents.
The note that Sydney had received caused a good deal of excitement at the Wonga-Wonga tea-table. Miss Smith, who helped Mrs. Lawson in the house, and taught Sydney’s sisters and his brother Harry, had not long come out from London, and was in a great fright.
“Oh, pray send him the horse, Master Sydney,” she cried, “or we shall all be murdered in our beds. You’ve got so many horses, one can’t make any difference.”
All the little Lawsons instantly turned on Miss Smith, though she was their governess.