So they had some every-day sort of work cut out to keep them selves going, and it took them all their time to get from one part of the country where they were known to some other place where they weren’t expected. Having out-and-out good hacks, and being all of them chaps that had been born in the bush and knew it like a book, it was wonderful how they managed to rob people at one place one day, and then be at some place a hundred miles off the next. Ever so many times they came off, and they’d call one another Starlight and Marston, and on, till the people got regularly dumbfounded, and couldn’t tell which of the gang it was that seemed to be all over the country, and in two places at the same time. We used to laugh ourselves sometimes, when we’d hear tell that all the travellers passing Big Hill on a certain day were “stuck up by Wall’s gang and robbed.” Every man jack that came along for hours was made to stand behind a clump of trees with two of the gang guarding them, so as the others couldn’t see them as they came up. They all had to deliver up what they’d got about ‘em, and no one was allowed to stir till sundown, for fear they should send word to the police. Then the gang went off, telling them to stay where they were for an hour or else they’d come back and shoot them.

This would be on the western road, perhaps. Next day a station on the southern road, a hundred and twenty miles off, would be robbed by the same lot. Money and valuables taken away, and three or four of the best horses. Their own they’d leave behind in such a state that anyone could see how far and fast they’d been ridden.

They often got stood to, when they were hard up for a mount, and it was this way. The squatters weren’t alike, by any manner of means, in their way of dealing with them. Many of them had lots of fine riding-horses in their paddocks. These would be yarded some fine night, the best taken and ridden hard, perhaps returned next morning, perhaps in a day or two.

It was pretty well known who had used them, but nothing was said; the best poliey, some think, is to hold a candle to the devil, especially when the devil’s camped close handy to your paddock, and might any time sack your house, burn down your woolshed and stacks, or even shoot at your worshipful self if he didn’t like the way you treated him and his imps.