“Now, see here, Mr. Redgrave,” said Pat Kearney—a rusé old veteran, who had put “the bracelets” upon many a horse and cattle stealer, and was not now about to have his first fray with bushrangers—“if we can snake on ’em before they have time to take to thim unlucky rade-bids—my heavy curse on thim for hiding villains—we have thim safe. They may fire a shot, but they’re unsignified crathers, not like Bin Hall or Morgan.”
“And why shouldn’t these fellows fight?” asked Jack.
“Ye see, now, it’s this a way. Just keep under the bank near thim big oaks—sure that’s iligant. ’Tis a great ornamint to the force ye’d make intirely. Well, as I tould ye, that spalpeen of a Redcap—more by token I put a handful of slugs in him once—has never killed any one yet—nor the others—d’ye see now?”
“I don’t see, Kearney, that it makes much difference—they’re outlaws.”
“Ah! but there’s a dale of differ between men that’s fighting with a halter round their necks, and these half-baked divils that hasn’t more than fifteen years’ gaol to fear, with maybe a touch of Berrima, at the outside.”
“I understand, then; you think that they are more likely to give in after the first flutter than if they were sure to be hanged when caught.”
“By coorse they will; why wouldn’t they? I knew Redcap when he’d think more of duffing a red heifer than all the money in the country. If he seen me, I believe he’d hold up his hands, from habit like.”
“Then you don’t think it a good plan to make bush-ranging the same as murder, and to hang a fellow directly he turns out?”
“Thim that wanted that law made didn’t have their families living on the Warroo,” said the old trooper, sturdily. “How can a couple of men like us thravel and purtect a district as big as Great Britain? And what would turn a raw lot like these devils let loose quicker than a blundering, over-severe law? By the mortial, they see us. Hould on, sir, and we’ll charge them together, like Wellington and the Proosians at Waterloo.”
The robbers had a good strategical position. Their base of operations was the reed-bed, a labyrinth of cane-like stalks which met overhead in the narrow paths worn by the feet of the stock. They were, however, divided in party and in purpose. Two of them had been detailed to fetch up the horses grazing in the reed-bed, and the remainder, having just sighted Redgrave and Constable Kearney, stood to their arms with sufficient determination.