As for the horses and the dead bushranger, we left them at the ford until morning, when Mr. Wright proposed to send men out to bury the one, and secure the others, and, if possible, return them to their owners.
As we walked along, Nancy related to me the adventures which she had encountered since leaving Melbourne. She was an old campaigner in Australia, and was on her way to Tares Creek to join her husband, who had been mining in that location ever since gold was first discovered.
He had intrusted her with a few hundred pounds to visit the city and purchase provisions and articles of daily use sufficient to last them through the wet season, and she had performed her mission, and instead of waiting for one of the regular freighting teams to take her to the creek, she had engaged passage with two miners, one of whom had his wife with him, and who owned a pair of horses and a wagon. Luckily Nancy had left her goods in the city, with orders to forward them by the freight wagons, so that she lost nothing personally, even if the ruffians did search her person, disbelieving her assertion that she was destitute of money and valuables.
The bushrangers had ambushed the party and shot them at their leisure, and did the business as coolly and with as much indifference as though the poor fellows had been sheep, and the ruffians hungry and in want of mutton. They didn't seem to think that they had done a cruel action; and when the younger female, whose name was Betsey Trueman, shed bitter tears at her loss, the brutes jested at her grief, and promised to supply his place with a fresher and more active husband. They couldn't understand why a woman should mourn for one man when there were others ready to take his place.
"The onfeeling wretches," Nancy said, concluding her story, "they had the impudence to put their hands not only in Betsey's pocket, but mine, too. I boxed the puppy's ears, and he had to bear it, although he did draw his knife and threaten to cut me to pieces. I wish that my old man had been there when he made the attempt. He would have broken every bone in his body, and then tore him limb from limb."
"That would have been rather a cruel fate," I remarked, somewhat amused at her eulogistic description of her husband's strength.
"Well, he could do it," was her confident answer, and I have no doubt that she thought so.
We reached the bend of the stream, where we had crossed an hour before, without accident, for the moon was shining full and bright, but when we intimated to our prisoners that it was desirable that they should wade through the water, which already began to subside, they doggedly refused, and all our urging was useless. They feared that we intended to drown them; and even when we sent Kala to the other side of the creek to prove that the water was not deep, they still remained sulky and obstinate.
"Let me argue the point wid 'em," Mike said, appealing to Mr. Wright, who reluctantly gave his consent.
"Step up, ye divils, the Irishman shouted, applying his sharp-pointed spear to the sides of the most obstinate robber.