“Stand and deliver! You are my prisoner!”
Joe slipped into the shadow, sheltering himself behind the chimney, and saw two troopers riding at him. Instinctively his gun was lifted to his shoulder.
“Bail up!” he cried. “A step nearer an’ I fire!”
The troopers spurred their horses. Rogers clinched his teeth, his eye ran along the barrel, he covered the leading man and fired. The trooper was flung forward on his horse’s neck, his arms dangling limply on each side. His horse sprang to a gallop, and a minute later the man slid over its shoulder and fell, rolling almost to Joe’s feet as the animal rushed past.
The second trooper fired a revolver, and the bullet chipped a slab at the gold-stealer’s ear. Rogers had him covered, and his finger was on the trigger when the gun was whirled from his hands and a man who had stolen up from the back closed with him. The newcorner was slim, and Rogers felt that he might break him between his hands if he could only get a proper grip; but the drunken drover—for it was he—was as sinuous as an eel, and a moment later Joe was on the broad of his back with the ‘darbies’ on his wrists and a trooper kneeling on his chest, while the drover, transformed into Detective Downy, stood over them, mopping his face with his big false beard.
The wounded trooper had recovered somewhat, and was on his hands and knees, with down-hanging head, in the light of the open door.
“How are you, Casey?” asked the detective anxiously.
“Aisy, sor. I’m jist wonderin’ if I’m dead or alive,” said the trooper in a still small voice, watching the blood-drops falling from his forehead.
“Then the devil a bit’s the matter with you, Casey.”
“Thank you, sor,” said the trooper, with a trained man’s confidence in his superior. “Thin I’d best git up, p’raps.” And he arose and stood dubiously fingering the furrow plowed along the top of his head by the gold stealer’s bullet.
“Get him into the hut,” said Downy, indicating Rogers with a nod; “and hobble the brute—he’s dangerous.”
Rogers, sitting on the edge of his bunk, handcuffed and leg-ironed, gazed sullenly at the detective.
“Well,” he said, “an’ now you’ve got me, what’s the charge?”
“A trifle of gold-stealing,” replied Downy, “and this,” indicating Casey’s bleeding head. “To say nothing of the murder of your accomplice.”
Rogers blanched and glared at the detective, his face contorted and his eyes big with terror.
“Shine,” he murmured, “d’ye mean Shine? It’s a lie; he’s not dead!”
Harry Hardy, who had just come upon the scene and was standing in the doorway, cried out at this.
“Great God!” he said. “Then it was Ephraim Shine after all!”
“Pooh!’” cried Rogers, “it was a trick to trap me into givin’ his name. You needn’t “a” troubled yerself. I don’t want to shield him—damn him!”
“Do you know where this Shine’s to be got at?” asked Downy, appealing to Harry, who had been working in concert with the detective ever since his appearance in Waddy.
“Yes,” was the reply. “I know his house. He’ll be easily taken.”
“Then go with the sergeant. Take Casey’s horse. It’ll be with the other. Here,” he threw Harry a revolver. “Case of need, you know, but no shooting if it can be avoided.”
Harry thrust the weapon in his belt, and a minute later he and Sergeant Monk rode off in company to take Ephraim Shine in the name of the Queen.
Meanwhile Dick was not at the bottom of the Piper shaft, as Rogers concluded in his haste. Joe had not left the boy half a minute when a second man made his appearance on the other side of the shaft. This was Downy, in his drover disguise. The detective, whose sole object in assuming the disguise was to watch Dick, believing that the boy would be sure to communicate with the real thieves, had witnessed his capture by Rogers and had followed in the latter’s tracks; and now, after being entertained and instructed by the words that had passed between Rogers and his captive, he cut Dick down, quickly frayed the end of the rope between two stones, and cut away Dick’s bonds, throwing the rope and gag into the shaft.
“Now, my lad,” he said sternly, “after that man. Take me the nearest track to the quarry you spoke of as quick as you can cut, and don’t make noise enough to wake a cat or I’ll hand you over to him when we get there.”
Dick did as he was bid; and they were in time to overlook Rogers as he searched amongst the stones, and to overhear some of the language that announced his failure. At this stage the detective, who had retained his grip of Dick’s wrist, whispered:
“You can go now, but you must take a message from me to Harry Hardy. Go straight to his house and say, “Downy says ‘Ready.’ Can I trust you?”
Dick nodded.
“You’re a plucky lad,” said Downy, “and I’ll take your word. Off you go, but make no noise.”
Dick crept quietly along the grass till he was well beyond hearing, and then ran down by Wilson’s ploughed land and out into the open country. He understood that the career of Joe Rogers as a gold-stealer was drawing to a close, and the knowledge brought him a certain sense of relief in spite of the fact that he quite realised Shine’s danger, and was more than ever devoted to the searcher’s daughter, more than ever pleased with the idea of her hearing some day how faithful and bold he had been, how true a knight to his liege lady.
He burst into the room where Mrs. Hardy and Harry and Mrs. Haddon were seated, hatless and breathless, and filled his friends with alarm.
“Please, Harry, Downy says ‘Ready!’” blurted Dick.
Harry sprang to his feet and made for the door.
“That means he’s discovered something important, mother.” he said as he passed out.
Dick followed, leaving the women astonished and curious, slipped away around the fence enclosing Harry’s home, and made off towards the other end of the township. His intention was to warn Ephraim Shine of the danger that threatened. He did not doubt but that Rogers, if he fell into the hands of the troopers, would tell all.
There was a light burning in Shine’s skillion, and Dick’s knock was answered by Miss Chris, who wore her hat and was on the point of leaving for her home at Summers’.
“I want your father,” said Dick quickly. “The troopers ‘r’ after him. Tell him to bolt.”
“Dickie—Dickie, whatever do you mean?” cried Christina, greatly agitated.
The next moment she was thrust aside and Shine appeared, showing a drawn gaunt face, the skin of which looked crinkled and yellow in the candle light, like old parchment.
“What’s that?” he gasped. “Who wants me?”
“You’re found out,” said Dick, drawing back, shocked by the ghastly appearance of the man. “They’re after Rogers. They’ve got him by this, I expect, an’ they’ll soon have you if you don’t make a bolt fer it.”
Shine uttered a wailing cry and Dick turned and fled again, afraid of being seen in the vicinity of the searcher’s abode by Downy or any of his men. Looking back he saw that the house was now in darkness, and surmised that Ephraim had taken advantage of his warning to escape into the bush.
When Harry Hardy and the trooper rode up to Shine’s house half an hour later, they found the place deserted. The door was on the latch, and the interior gave no indication of a hurried departure, but the searcher was nowhere to be seen.
“It’s all right,” said Harry, “he’ll be somewhere about the township. I’ll take a trip round an’ see if I can hit on him, if you’ll stay here an’ keep watch.”
“Right,” said the sergeant, “but you’d best drop in on Downy and let him know. If our man gets wind of what’s happened he’ll skedaddle.”
“If he doesn’t we’ll nab him at the mine at one.”
Harry found that Downy had disposed of his prisoner, having converted the cellar at the Drovers’ Arms into a lock-up for the time being, and smuggled Joe Rogers in so artfully that McMahon’s patrons in the bar were quite ignorant of the proximity of the prisoner and of the presence of the guardian angel sitting patiently in the next room, tenderly nursing a broken head and a six-barrelled Colt’s revolver.
Harry and Downy searched Waddy from end to end in quest of Ephraim Shine, and saw nothing of him. Downy interviewed Christina without betraying his identity or his object, but could get no inforination of any value; and when the missing man failed to put in an appearance at the Silver Stream to search the miners from the pump coming off work, the hunt was abandoned for the time being.
“He’s got wind of my game and cleared,” said Downy, “but we’ll have him before forty-eight hours have passed.”
“But how could he know?” asked Harry, impatient to lay Shine by the heels.
“May have heard the shots. May have been hiding anywhere. But, never fret, we’ll round up your friend, my boy. Men of his make and shape are as easy to track as a hay waggon.”
In the early hours of the morning Downy drove his prisoner into Yarraman, and that day’s issue of the local Mercury contained a thrilling description of the capture of the Waddy gold-stealer—a description that created an unprecedented demand for the Mercury, and quite compensated the gifted editor for, the heartburnings he had endured over the bushranging fiasco.
Waddy was dumbfounded when the Mercury came to hand, and horribly disgusted to think the stirring incident described had happened right under its nose, without its having the satisfaction of witnessing the least moving adventure or catching even a glimpse of the prisoner. Joe Rogers a free man was a familiar and commonplace object, but Joe Rogers handcuffed and leg-ironed in the custody of the law was a person of absorbing interest, and Waddy would have turned out to a man and woman to give him an appropriate send-off.
There, before their eyes, set forth in the columns of the Mercury, were the details of Detective Downy’s ruse, and valuable remarks enlarging upon the almost superhuman astuteness of the officer in question; the story of Dick’s capture by Rogers, the flight to the Piper shaft and all that happened there, the fight between the gold-stealer and the troopers, the shooting of Casey, the overthrow of Rogers, and the hunt for Ephraim Shine; all these things had happened in a small township within the space of a few hours, and Waddy, that had always found its Sunday nights hang so heavily on its hands, had been cheated out of every item of the bewildering list. It was a shame, an outrage. Detective Downy was voted a public enemy, and his name was execrated from the chapel yard to McMahon’s bar.
The only satisfaction available to the people was in going over the ground, and they flocked to Joe’s hut and congregated there, discussing, arguing, and predicting; examining with owlish wisdom the bullet mark on the hut chimney, and counting the blood spots on the worn track near the door where the hero Casey bled in defence of his country’s laws. Of course, ‘the boy Haddon’ was a favourite theme, and now Dick appeared as a public benefactor. The matter of the stolen gold had yet to be settled, but the most generous view of this business was popular, and the confidence in Richard Haddon was complete. The women declared emphatically and without a blush that they had always believed in the honesty and intelligence and brave good heart of the boy. To be sure he was a bit wild and a little mischievous—but, there, what boy worth his salt was not? and, in spite of everything they had all seen long ago that Widow Haddon’s young son was a good lad at bottom. His conduct in deluding Joe Rogers in the face of so terrible a danger reflected credit upon Waddy, and Waddy gratefully responded by being heartily proud of him. A crowd marched to Mrs. Haddon’s back fence expressly to cheer Dick; and cheer him they did, in a solemn, matter-of-fact way, like a people performing a high public duty. Dick was not in the least moved by this display of feeling, but his mother was delighted and kissed him heartily, and responded on his behalf by shaking a towel out of the back window with great energy and much genuine emotion.