‘The first thing I saw was the corporal a-flyin’ in the air one way, his musket another, and the cow, the black bullock, and the whole of the mob charging through the soldiers and the road gang.
‘“Back up, boys,” I roared, “keep them going!” as we swept through the party; soldiers running one way, the convicts, poor beggars, making their chains rattle again in their hurry to get safe away. That was a time! I saw the young soldier-officer capsized on to one of his men. Such a smash I never see; it was all downhill luckily. Away we went at the tail of the mob, galloping for our lives, and soon left red coats and yellow trousers, muskets and leg-irons, far behind us. Luckily the mob was too wild to break, and before sundown we were miles from the bottom of the hill, and had the cattle safe inside of the rock-wall camp, where we had a good feed and a night’s sleep, both of which we wanted bad enough.’
‘I’ll be bound you did,’ assented the landlord; ‘it’s a hard life, is a stockman’s—out in all weathers, and risking your life, as one might say.’
‘Life?’ said the saturnine, grizzled old land-pirate, who had apparently relapsed into a different train of thought; ‘what’s a man’s life in this country; leastways used to be. Here!’ roared he, dashing his hand upon the table, ‘bring in a bottle of brandy, Joe, and a kettle of water, and I’ll tell you a yarn about old days as’ll make your hair curl, unless this here gentleman’s ashamed to drink with old Ike?’
Mr. Neuchamp had by this period of the evening made the discovery that he had invoked a fiend that he was unable to lay; as the old stockman glared at him with half-infuriate, half-imploring eyes, while putting his last observation into the form of a question, he felt much inclined to defy and refuse his uncomfortable boon companion. But having evaded the implied obligation to drink so far he thought it expedient to comply, partly from the novelty of the experience, partly from his dislike to a possible quarrel.
‘Ha!’ said the strange old man, as he half filled his tumbler with the powerful spirit, and stirred the heavy red glowing logs in the stone fireplace till they shot up a shower of sparks, and threw out a fierce heat like the mouth of a furnace; ‘fine thing is a fire! that put me in mind of it. Fill up, curse ye! Joe, ye old, half-baked Jimmy. It was over on the Dervent side, afore I came here at all, that two chaps as did a good deal on the cross, that’s how it was told me, was a-skinnin’ a bullock in a gully, as had only one end to it.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ inquired Mr. Neuchamp. ‘Surely——’
‘I mean,’ impatiently broke in the narrator, ‘as you could run stock in at one end, and if they got high up they found a wall of rock at the far end, and they couldn’t well get back, it was so tarnation narrow. Now do you savey? They were the only coves as knew the secret of it in that part, and many a beast, and many a colt and filly—horses was horses then—they branded or put away there. Well, as I was saying, they wasn’t two very particular chaps, and they was a-skinnin’ of a bullock, having previously killed him; there warn’t no doubt of that, as the head was on the ground close by with a bullet hole not very far off the curl. Similarly it was a “cross” beast. No mistake about that either. The hide, three-parts off, showed the RX brand; one that belonged to H., one of the largest stockholders in the island, and a man who would prosecute any man as dared touch his property, to the gallows, if he could get him there. No hope of mercy from him. They had no right to take the bullock, of course it was felony, and now they were caught red-handed by this chap—Pretty Jack; he was the ugliest man in the island, and he was going to turn informer. He grinned when he came up. “There’s my liberty,” says he, pointing to the beast; “I’m sorry for you, boys,” says he, “but every man for himself.” The men looks at one another, then at him; he had ’em in his hand; they saw the courthouse crammed, and heard the judge pass the sentence, a heavy one of course, for a second colonial conviction. They heard the gaol door clang as they were shut in for the long infernal years which would bring ’em nearly, if not quite, to the end of a man’s life. Some of this sort these two chaps had tasted before; they shuddered and trembled when they thought of it, and the man who was to do all this by his own willing informing was their own friend and fellow-prisoner; an accomplice, too, in a goodish lot of undiscovered crimes. He sat looking at the beast with a stupid grin on his ugly face. They looked at each other. Then one man walked past him on the track, and stopped. When he saw this man’s eyes, and the murder written there, he called out, “For God’s sake, don’t kill me, mates; it was all in joke, I never meant to inform on you.” But it was too late—they were too much afraid of their own lives to trust them to him; besides their anger had been kindled against the man who had been an accomplice, and was now an informer. “All right, Jack,” called out one of the men, “help us to get off this hide.” He did so nervously, and anxious to curry favour. The hide was soon stripped, and as they turned to make some joking remark, one of them struck him over the head with a heavy piece of wood. The wretched fool fell on his knees, groaning bad enough.
‘“O my God!—Charley,” said he, in his agony, “what’s this about?—you won’t really hurt me? for the love of God, for the sake of my wife and the young ones, pity me; I never meant it, God above knows.”
‘“Nonsense, man,” said one of them, “we ain’t a-going to hurt ye; we’re only a-goin’ to stitch ye up in this here hide a bit, to keep ye from gabbin’ while we’re putting this bullock away. Now lie still, or by —— I’ll pole-axe you.”