Just then a yell of triumph from the scrub on the other shore seemed to vouch for the fact, and was answered by a dozen sympathetic whoops and shouts from the afore-mentioned ‘Cornstalks’ and ‘Banana-men,’ who crowded along our side of the river.
The sergeant struggled to free himself; and his fair antagonist unwound her arms, saying: ‘Come now, sargent, sit down peaceably and eat your supper, can’t you! What’s the good of making such a bother over an old scrubber of a mare!’
‘An old scrubber of a mare!’ repeated the sergeant aghast ‘D’ye think we’d ride this far over a scrubber of a mare? Why, it’s the Lady Godiva he took; old Stanford’s race-mare, worth five hundred guineas, if she’s worth a penny. Bother me! if he didn’t take her clean out of the stable in Tambo, settling-night, after she’d won the big money! But there, you all know as much about it as I can tell you, that’s plain to be seen, for I never mentioned a mare; it was your own self, I do believe; and I’ll have him, if I have to follow him to Melbourne.—Just got married, has he? Well, I can’t help that; he shouldn’t go stealing race-mares.—Well, perhaps you didn’t know all about it,’ went on the sergeant, in reply to the asseverations of the Dwyer family as regarded their knowledge of the way the young man had become possessed of the mare. ‘But,’ shaking his head sententiously, ‘I’m much mistaken if most of this crowd hadn’t a pretty good idea that there was something cross about her. However,’ he concluded philosophically, ‘it’s no use crying over spilt milk. I’ll have to ride over to G—— at daylight—that’s another forty miles—and get an extradition warrant out for him. He might just as well have come quietly at first, for we’re bound to have the two of them some time or other.’
It was now nearly daylight; and our party set out on their return home, leaving the troopers comfortably seated at the supper, or rather by this time, breakfast table; while just below the house, in a bend of the river, we could see, as we passed along, a group of men busily engaged in swimming a mob of horses—amongst which was doubtless the Lady Godiva herself—over to the New South Wales shore, where, on the bank, plainly to be discerned in the early dawn, stood the tall form of her lawless owner.
‘How do you think it will all end?’ I asked Bray.
‘Oh,’ was the reply, ‘they’ll square it, most likely. I know something of that Stanford; he’s a bookmaker; and if he gets back the mare and a cheque for fifty or a hundred pounds, to cover expenses, he’ll not trouble much after Jim.’
‘Yes. But the police?’ I asked.
‘Easier squared than Stanford,’ answered Bray dogmatically.
That this ‘squaring’ process was successfully put in force seemed tolerably certain; for very shortly afterwards I read that at the autumn meeting of the N. Q. J. C., the Lady Godiva had carried off the lion’s share of the money; and I also had the pleasure of meeting Mr and Mrs Dwyer in one of Cobb & Co.’s coaches, bound for the nearest railway terminus, about three hundred miles distant, thence to spend a month or so in Sydney; Jim, as his wife informed me, having done uncommonly well out of a mob of cattle and horses which he had been travelling for sale through the colonies; so had determined to treat himself and the ‘missis,’ for the first time in their lives, to a look at the ‘big smoke.’
‘That was a great shine at our wedding, wasn’t it?’ she asked, as the coachman gathered up the reins preparatory to a fresh start. ‘But’—and here she tapped her husband on the head with her parasol—‘I look out now that he don’t go sticking-up to any more Lady Godivas.’