That night it was my lot to gain
A reliquary and a chain. . .
Demand not how the prize I hold!
It was not given, or lent, or sold.
Upon approaching the western road, the party lay to in a thicket, while McCoy, who was now dressed in Huggins’s clothes, was sent forward to reconnoitre. He carried a pistol, a pair of handcuffs, and a letter which had been found in their victim’s pocket, and was instructed by Foxley, in the event of being met and questioned, what he should say, so that he might pass for a constable proceeding from Penrith, with a letter for Overseer Huggins.
He was away nearly two hours, and on his return he reported that the coast was clear, when the rest of the party recrossed with him the avenue they had so much dreaded to pass. All that day they wandered about in the vicinity of the road without food, and after nightfall McCoy was dispatched with directions to endeavour to procure some eatables from a station which they knew to be at no great distance. Rashleigh, worn out by hunger and fatigue, had long been asleep in their temporary hiding-place, when, far in the night, their emissary returned. Our adventurer, however, was awakened by Foxley, who bade him “bear a hand, rouse up, and eat that”, at the same time throwing him a piece of bread and a lump of raw salt meat, as, independent of their desire for speed, they dared not light a fire to cook anything, being too close to the road and settled part of the country. When he had partly devoured this primitive meal, he was handcuffed to Smith, who was, for the present, divested of his arms and destined with himself to enact the part of a prisoner in charge of Foxley and McCoy, who both of them assumed the character of constables, escorting prisoners to Penrith lock-up house.
They now went boldly on to the high-road, along which they proceeded in silence about two miles, until Rashleigh came to a place he recognised as being on the top of Lapstone hill, the last eminence of the Blue mountains eastward, and but a short distance from Ralph’s old quarters at Emu Plains. At the foot of the hill, a usual halting place, they found two drays, the drivers of which, according to their general practice, were encamped under them. The sham constables here diverged from the road and went up to the fires left alight by the travellers. The oxen were grazing around, but the dogs quickly aroused the sleepers, of whom there were four in all. The mock prisoners were now ordered to halt by Foxley and McCoy, who asked if they could have a drink of water. One of the men replied, “Certainly”, and gave them some, adding that if they would wait a few minutes, some tea should be prepared for them.
“Why, neither I nor my mate,” returned Foxley, “care about tea; but if you’ve a mind to give these poor devils of prisoners any, I dare say they would be glad of a feed, before they get to their journey’s end in the chokey (lock-up).”
“If that’s like to be the end of their travels,” observed the kind-hearted bullock-driver, “I pity them, with all my heart.” And he half-filled a large iron pot in order to boil it for tea.
The rest of the travellers were now assembled round the fire, helping to get ready a feed; for these wayfarers on the roads of New South Wales were at that time remarkably hospitable, as their erratic mode of life placed them completely at the mercy of any of the many small bands of armed plunderers who were so frequently levying contributions on the King’s highway in those days; and the ordinary carriers always paid great court to the convict population, perhaps imagining they might often escape being plundered, if they could only acquire the name of good fellows among that class. In the present case, therefore, while they treated the supposed constables with only ordinary civility, they paid most solicitous attention to their sham prisoners, supplying them with pipes and tobacco, and hastening the preparation of food for their use.
At length, all being ready, the new-comers sat down to eat, their hosts excusing themselves from joining in the repast, upon the ground that they had supped at a very late hour, and they sat in various positions telling, or seeking after news. At length one of the bullock-drivers asked what the prisoners were charged with, and McCoy replied, “They are bolters (runaway convicts). They belonged to that mob of Foxley the bushranger’s; but they won’t tell us where we could find him, or else we’d very soon have him as well as them.”
The name of Foxley caused an instant sensation. All the travellers began at once to question their visitors.
“Was Foxley near this? — How long since he’d been heard of? — What way was it thought he was going?” And the last querist enquired what was the last robbery or murder he had done.
To these hasty queries McCoy replied that it was thought Foxley was now somewhere near Bathurst, but had been heard of going back to the south, where he had lately been robbing all the country, concluding by stating that “Foxley might be a great terror to the south country constables, but he only wished that himself and his mate could come across the scoundrel, that was all!”
At this the elder of the bullock-drivers very politically observed, “For my part, I’d like to make a child’s bargain with Foxley: let be for let be. For folks do say he’s a regular devil, a complete fire-eater; and at any rate, it don’t answer, you know, for us folks that’s on the road to be meeting with gentlemen of his sort very often.”
“Och, botheration to your clack,” now struck in a sprightly Hibernian among the travellers, whose face betokened his unquestionable Milesian origin. “What a clatter you keep about Foxley! As if nobody knew anything about him at all at all but yourself. Sure, an’t Phil Foxley my own uncle’s wife’s shister’s husband’s sixth cousin? And oughtn’t I to know him, whin we used to be gossoons together playing at hurley in ould Ireland? And mark my words, sure you’d see if Phil was forenenst me now” (and the speaker looked direct at Foxley) “all that would be in id: he’d say at wanst, ‘Murtagh Cassidy, my jewel, is id yourself that’s in id?’ And he’d thrate me to the besht that was to be got!”
“But did you ever see Foxley since you came to this country?” now enquired McCoy, having been prompted to ask this ingenious gentleman the question by the real Simon Pure, who in fact appeared much to enjoy the rhodomontade of his Irish relation.
“Is id me see him?” responded the other, nothing abashed. “Faix thin, Mr Consthable, maybe id’s wanting to thrap me you are, in the regard ov my poor cuzin Phil, bein’ onlooky and the like. But, you see, I’ll only tell you I seen him a good many times in the counthry, and I won’t tell you neither whin nor whare we met. So you can’t take no hould of that, you see. Oh, I don’t mean any harm,” replied McCoy; “but only I’d like to know what like a man he is in size, as everybody talks so much about him. I’ve got a description of him from the runaway list; but then, that was took a long time ago, when he first came to the country, you know.”
“Och faix. As to that, if id’s your look to take the poor boy a presnor, ‘why, God’s will be done! What soort of a man is he, agrah? Faix thin, he looks just like meself; and we used always to be took for brothers even, if you plaze, whin we’d be together.”
Now the only difference between the appearance of Foxley and his veracious pretended kinsman were these: the former was as swarthy as an Italian, the latter as red as a fox; Philip was about sixteen stone weight, Murtagh not more than seven; Foxley was a strongly built, muscular and well-proportioned man, Cassidy was a little lean fretful-looking being, with ferret eyes, fiery hair and a confirmed snub nose. So, after all, their general favour could never have been so exceedingly alike, but the fact was, the whole tale was no more than a pure invention of the fertile brain of this ingenious off-side bullock-driver, who was very fond of what is by the vulgar in the Colony called “lifting himself”, that is, seeking for respect from others at the expense of truth.
Another of the bullock-drivers hereupon observed, “It’s all very well for you to talk about such things; but I should only just like to know whether there is any chance of our falling in with the same Foxley, for I could guess what to do in such a case.”
“Indeed!” said the bushranger chief. “Then I can tell you I have real good reasons for believing that Phil Foxley is not so far off as my mate here seems to think. In fact, I am certain I have been quite close to him this very day, and I’ll swear I will be alongside of him tonight yet, let him look as sharp as he likes; for I won’t sleep until I do. But, you know, when we came across these two men, we was forced to take them to the lock-up before we could go after the others.”
“Well then, if he’s so close as that,” returned the bullock-driver, “we must begin to look a little sharp, for he may be paying us a visit, if he knows we are on the road. I’ll just get my musket ready, and I’d advise you to do the same, Jem.”
Accordingly, Jem and the last speaker disappeared under the dray and presently returned with two old soldiers’ firelocks, which they began to arrange. Jem remarked that the charge had been so long in his gun he should draw it out, and began to do so; but Foxley, seeing that the screw on the end of his ram-rod was broken, offered to do it for him, and the other thanked him, resigning the weapon for this purpose.
In the mean time McCoy had got hold of the other man’s piece under pretence of looking at it. He turned round to Foxley. Their eyes met. Both lay down the travellers’ muskets and presented their own at the astonished bullock-drivers, whom they ordered to stand still on peril of their lives. “For,” added Foxley, in a tone of thunder, “I am Foxley the bushranger!”
Master Cassidy at that moment was stooping to light his pipe; but no sooner did he hear this dreaded mandate than, letting fall both pipe and knife into the fire in a paroxysm of fright, he leaped backwards over a heap of bullock bows, yokes and chains and ran off with the speed of a hunted deer.
McCoy presented his piece; but Foxley, who burst into an uproarious fit of laughter at the hasty retreat of his so-called cousin, thrust up the muzzle of the other’s musket, and as soon as he could speak cried, “Damn him, how he runs away from his relation. Come back, you fool, to your cousin phil! No. he won’t! Well then, blast him, let him run. He can’t get any help within three miles, at any rate, and I strongly suspect he’s too much bothered by his fright to know what way to go to look for it at all.”
The handcuffs were now taken off the pretended prisoners. Smith, being equipped with a gun, was posted as a guard over the remaining three travellers, whose persons were then closely searched by McCoy, who deprived them of their valuables with considerable address and some jokes as to how nicely they were taken in by the supposed constables. In the mean time Foxley had nearly unloaded both the bullock drays and selected such articles as he thought fit from their lading, all this being completed in a marvellously short space of time. The bullock-drivers were lashed fast to the poles and wheel of their drays, and the bushrangers, heavily laden, departed under the guidance of their chief.
The neighbourhood seemed to be quite familiar to Foxley, who led them by a most circuitous route until they again reached the foot of the mountains, where they are washed by the Nepean at the northern end of the Emu Plains. Here, in a most sequestered spot, they halted as the morning dawned, and took their first regular meal for forty-eight hours; after this they examined their booty, which comprised half a chest of tea, a bag of Mauritius sugar, a basket of Brazilian tobacco and a quantity of wearing apparel, shawls and handkerchiefs. They had also secured some flour and pork, and fancied themselves freed from apprehensions of famine, at least for a week. The greater part of the day was spent in sleep, and at the approach of night, McCoy was again dispatched to reconnoitre. After a short absence he returned and led the party to the river bank at a spot where they found a large bark canoe, which it seemed he had stolen from some settler’s wharf hard by.
In this they paddled along very softly for some hours, keeping under the shade of the mountains as much as possible, for the opposite bank of the river was crowded with human habitations, and it was sometimes so narrow that even the slight noise they unavoidably made in using their rude oars alarmed the farmers’ dogs, who ran along the shore baying with all their might and thus aroused their masters and mistresses, who then appeared in grotesque groups on the heights beside the stream, bearing bark torches in their hands, and hailing, to know whether there was anyone upon the river. But as the depredators in the canoe, of course, did not choose to reply, and as the precautions taken by these good folks in bringing out their flaring flambeaux effectually prevented themselves from seeing any object at the distance of a dozen yards from their noses, they could not discover the cause of the incessant din created by their wiser as well as more sharp-sighted canine guardians, and the party proceeded unmolested until the first blush of dawn tinged the eastern sky; when, finding themselves near a favourable spot, they ran their canoe close in among the reeds, unloaded her, concealed their cargo in various places, and then betook themselves to a fastness in the North Rocks, where they slept without fear.
Upon awakening in the evening, Foxley and McCoy had a short conversation with Smith, and leaving him, as it seemed, to watch Rashleigh, they set off towards the river. From conversation with his companion in their absence, Ralph discovered that their present hiding-place was the North Rocks, near Richmond, and that the other two bushrangers had now gone to that place in order to find out a purchaser for the fruits of their enterprise. They did not return until very early in the morning, when all of the party set to work collecting the goods they had hidden, and placing them together, the person with whom they had agreed to become a purchaser being expected every moment.
There ............