Chapter 17
I wasn't in the humour for talking, but sometimes anything's better than one's own thoughts. Goring threw in a word from time to time. He'd only lately come into our district, and was sure to be promoted, everybody said. Like Starlight himself, he'd seen better days at home in England; but when he got pinched he'd taken the right turn and not the wrong one, which makes all the difference. He was earning his bread honest, anyway, and he was a chap as liked the fun and dash of a mounted policeman's life. As for the risk—and there is some danger, more than people thinks, now and then—he liked that the best of it. He was put out at losing Jim; but he believed he couldn't escape, and told me so in a friendly way. 'He's inside a circle and he can't get away, you mark my words,' he said, two or three times. 'We have every police-station warned by wire, within a hundred miles of here, three days ago. There's not a man in the colony sharper looked after than Master Jim is this minute.'
'Then you only heard about us three days ago?' I said.
'That's as it may be,' he answered, biting his lip. 'Anyhow, there isn't a shepherd's hut within miles that he can get to without our knowing it. The country's rough, but there's word gone for a black tracker to go down. You'll see him in Bargo before the week's out.'
I had a good guess where Jim would make for, and he knew enough to hide his tracks for the last few miles if there was a whole tribe of trackers after him.
That night we rode into Bargo. A long day too we'd had—we were all tired enough when we got in. I was locked up, of course, and as soon as we were in the cell Goring said, 'Listen to me,' and put on his official face—devilish stern and hard-looking he was then, in spite of all the talking and nonsense we'd had coming along.
'Richard Marston, I charge you with unlawfully taking, stealing, and carrying away, in company with others, one thousand head of mixed cattle, more or less the property of one Walter Hood, of Outer Back, Momberah, in or about the month of June last.'
'All right; why don't you make it a few more while you're about it?'
'That'll do,' he said, nodding his head, 'you decline to say anything. Well, I can't exactly wish you a merry Christmas—fancy this being Christmas Eve, by Jove!—but you'll be cool enough this deuced hot weather till the sessions in February, which is more than some of us can say. Good-night.' He went out and locked the door. I sat down on my blanket on the floor and hid my head in my hands. I wonder it didn't burst with what I felt then. Strange that I shouldn't have felt half as bad when the judge, the other day, sentenced me to be a dead man in a couple of months. But I was young then.
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