What made us more set upon clearing out of the country was that we were getting a good bit of money together, and of course we hadn’t much chance of spending it. Every place where we’d been seen was that well watched there was no getting nigh it, and every now and then a strong mob of police, ordered down by telegraph, would muster at some particular spot where they thought there was a chance of surrounding us. However, that dodge wouldn’t work. They couldn’t surround the Hollow. It was too big, and the gullies between the rocks too deep. You could see across a place sometimes that you had to ride miles round to get over. Besides, no one knew there was such a place, leastways that we were there any more than if we had been in New Zealand.

Chapter XXVI

CHAPTER XXVI

After the Ballabri affair we had to keep close for weeks and weeks. The whole place seemed to be alive with police. We heard of them being on Nulla Mountain and close enough to the Hollow now and then. But Warrigal and father had places among the rocks where they could sit up and see everything for miles round. Dad had taken care to get a good glass, too, and he could sweep the country round about almost down to Rocky Flat. Warrigal’s eyes were sharp enough without a glass, and he often used to tell us he seen things—men, cattle, and horses—that we couldn’t make out a bit in the world. We amused ourselves for a while the best way we could by horse-breaking, shooting, and what not; but we began to get awful tired of it, and ready for anything, no matter what, that would make some sort of change.

One day father told us a bit of news that made a stir in the camp, and nearly would have Jim and me clear out altogether if we’d had any place to go. For some time past, it seems, dad had been grumbling about being left to himself so much, and, except this last fakement, not having anything to do with the road work. “It’s all devilish fine for you and your brother and the Captain there to go flashin’ about the country and sporting your figure on horseback, while Fm left alone to do the housekeepin’ in the Hollow. I’m not going to be wood-and-water Joey, I can tell ye, not for you nor no other men. So I’ve made it right with a couple of chaps as I’ve know’d these years past, and we can do a touch now and then, as well as you grand gentlemen, on the ‘high toby,’ as they call it where I came from.”