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As I said before, the little affair made a great stir, and all the police in the country were round Ballabri for a bit, tracking and tracking till all hours, night and day; but they couldn't find out what had become of the wheel-marks, nor where our horse tracks led to.
We only rode sharp for the first twenty miles or so, and took it easier afterwards. If sticking up the Goulburn mail made a noise in the country, you may depend the Ballabri bank robbery made ten times as much. Every little newspaper and all the big ones, from one end of the colony to the other, were full of it.
'You might have sent us a letter, or a message, only I suppose you didn't think it worth while. 'What a bad state the country's getting in, says Maddie. 'Think of them bush-rangers sticking up the bank at Ballabri, and locking up the constable in his own cell. Ha! ha! The police magistrate was here to-night. You should have heard Bella talking so nice and proper to him about it.
I've known bankers to make a regular good fight of it, and sometimes come off best when their places was stuck up; but not when they were bested from the very start, like this one. No man could have had a show, if he was two or three men in one, at the Ballabri money-shop. We walked slap down to the hotel then it was near the bank and called for drinks.
He was the intelligence man, and had all the news sent to him roundabout it might be, but it always came, and was generally true; and the old man never troubled anybody twice that he couldn't believe in, great things or small. Well, word was passed about a branch bank at a place called Ballabri, where a goodish bit of gold was sent to wait the monthly escort.
"Should you like to know where the Marstons are, Sir Ferdinand," says she, "Dick and Jim?" "Know? Would I not?" says he. "No end of warrants out for them; since that Ballabri Bank robbery they seem to have disappeared under ground. And that fellow Starlight, too! Most remarkable man of his day. I'd give my eyes to put the bracelets upon him." 'She whispered something into his ear.
A writing chap said once, 'A large well-filled graveyard, a small church mostly locked up, six public-houses, gave the principal features of Ballabri township. The remaining ones appear to be sand, bones, and broken bottles, with a sprinkling of inebriates and blackfellows. With all that there was a lot of business done there in a year by the stores and inns, particularly since the diggings.
A four-roomed cottage, a log lock-up with two cells, a four-stalled stable, and a horse-yard. Ballabri was a small township with a few big stations, a good many farms about it, and rather more public-houses than any other sort of buildings in it.
They had on their revolvers underneath their coats. We were to go round by another road and meet at the township. Well, everything turned out first-rate. When we got to Ballabri there was father walking his horses up and down. They wanted cooling, my word.
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. After the Ballabri affair we had to keep close for weeks and weeks. The whole place seemed to be alive with police.
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