A REFORMED BUSHRANGER.

Press, Volume IV, Issue 10064, 16 June 1898, Page 3

A REFORMED BUSHRANGER.

A STORY OF BANKS' PENINSULA.

The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic

News. It was four in the morning and bright moonlight when the Maori boy galloped up to my shanty door and sang out that they were sticking up One Tree Farm. Not that, if he had mentioned anywhere else, I would'nt have turned over on my side and gone to sleep again. I was a bu*hman of a good many year's standing, and had done pretty well everything from pitch-and-toss to justifiable homicide. What should I care that a gang of roughs were going to rob (and Heaven knows what besides) a helpless old settler and a young lady tourist. A_v, that was it, for that young lady was tlie only woman who had ever made mc wish to be a gentleman again, something better than this gambler and hard liver, with a dozen of the best of reasons for keeping to the bush.

Well, she was in danger, and fifty miles away. I dressed in ten seconds (you don't take* off much at night up-country), and the Maori helped mc catch the horses. There's only one way of going fifty miles at a hand-gallop—to have two horses that know their business in all its branches. I went in for this sort of thing then. I had a dark brown mare and a bay colt outside in the paddock, groomed every morning, fame as pebbles, and knowing as much about ush-riding as a horse can know. It was summer, and the cocksfoot was ripe and better feed than oats, and it made them as hard as nails. Four o'clock in the morning is rather late than otherwise out here, but the rate we dressed those two animals up in a saddle and two bridles made them open their eyes. Next moment I was out on the track, riding the mare and leading the bay. I was bare-headed and wore a jumper, for we would have to ride through tlie manuka scrub, and I had no extra clothes except a revolver and one spur. You don't wear two where there is no one to keep up appearances before, and if one side of the horse goes on the other doesn't stay behind.

This east coast of New Zealand is as wild a place as there is in the world, which was why I lived there. The wind comes in from across a few thousand miles of the Pacific, across the ranges of bare rock and withered grass and stunted scrub, and a whiff of it will fly to your head. A horse will start and plunge when he takes in a full breath. At the time I speak of you could ride all day and never see a shantv —only now and then a dozen sheep, a wild pig, or a flock of pigeons. It was here that the convict Roberts, known all through New Zealand, hid for weeks from the police and got away to South America at last, and that was only a few years ago. A man could "put up" a place like One Tree Farm, where I was heading for, and never hear of it again. We went easy the first five minutes, you may be sure. "Walk the first mile," is one of the bush-rider's rules, and I knew if there was to be any racing it would have to be at the end. Soon we stretched into a swinging canter or haud-gallop, the colt slipping along at my side in magnificent style, as I had taught him. At this sort of work you don't want tho second horse to gallop on in front and drag you off the saddle, or hang back and wind the reins round your body. Tliree or four miles on we took a short cut through the scrub. Ugh! it was a cold bath. It is always freezing about day-break just here, and the bush was soaked with dew. When we plunged out into the open again my bare head was ringing wet, and the water down the neck of my jumper would have made mc wince i" I had not been pretty well casehardened. But then when you are in love you don't attend much to anything else. In love! and with a girl you never intend to see again ! Three weeks ago I would have laughed at any one who told mc I had not got past tlie love-at-fii'st-sight age. Aiui three weeks ago I had first met her at a squatter's homestead, a real tip-top swell at Home, I heard, "doing" the colonies so-as to write a book about them. Well, she was likely to get enough "copy" to-day to last out a serial in a magazine, that is, if she got through it alive. Two days after we met I got my horse and cleared out. After all, I was a gentleman once, and there was one thing I would not do—ask any one who was-a lady to marry mc, after a life like mine. For somehow or other I got an idea that she actually cared for mc, and as for myself—well, it was the pluckiest thing I ever did, running away that time. And now she was stranded at One Tree Farm, left, as it happened, with only an old man to look after her till the evening, and two of the worst of Barry's gang going to bail them up. There were only two, the Maori had told mc, and if one man can't kill two men for a girl he loves, then he is not a man at all. But should I be in time?

Just when I had got as far as this the mare began to labour. I eased her up, and at the same moment, chucking my foot out of the stirrup, leaned down and undid the girth. , I pulled them up short, and the rate I made the quick-change of the saddle on to the colt's back, threw my leg across him, and slewed the mare on to the off-side for a fresh start made them wink.

Ffteen miles gone. We have our girths loose up here in the back-country, and they were both bred on hills, with lungs like organ-bellows, but the pace we had come along this murderous track had told on their wind. With a curse upon all horse-flesh 1 eased them into a canter. To ride any distance on the coast here you want to know the country. Range upon range run down parallel to each other to the sea, with a gully between each, so it is a case of ride slow up hill, canter down again, gallop along the "flat." to the next range, and then rise again. With a fast rider a horse's expecta,tion of life is three years, and even a Waler will get his forelegs knocked up down these break-neck ranges. To a new chum this work looks like suicide, and so it is for a new chum, for he meddles with his horse's mouth, and is bound to bring him down. With a horse that has a leg to spare, and sits back on his haunches, galloping down a range is as safe as sitting in an arm-chair. I used to do it coming back from the mail, and read the paper all the time. Day was just Tweaking as we got down the first range and reached the flat. If I ever write a poem (which is likely), it will be about dawn on the coast of the South Pacific, so I won't describe it here; but there is a deathly sort of stillness for a moment, and it feels as if everything in the world was

waiting for something awful to- happen. I put the colt into a gallop and touched tho maro in the ribs with the toe of my right foot. The sea thundered in on the near side and almost wet the horses' feet.

I had shifted to the mare again, and going up the next rise she began to blow, and I made another quick-change to the bay. Before we had gone five miles further I saw that he was done. Young horses are liKe young sheep dogs, they start at full gallop, and fume because they can't go faster, and then they crack up when an old stager is only getting his second wind. 1 was still the best part of an hour from One Tree Farm, when the bay tumbled down like a pack of cards under mc with a sort of inward moan. Five seconds later I had the saddle on the brown mare, and touched her with the spur. Everything now was staked on the drop of Arab blood she had in her veins.

I was now on the top of a range, and could see the whole of tlie Ninety Mile Beach stretching before mc to the south, for the morning was clear. But I had little eye for scenery just now; right below mc, only a mile or two from the homestead, as it seemed, Long John and a second man were jogging comfortably along. I knew Long John from his figure (though they wero far away), and Heaven help the homestead if he got there.

I was passing a Maori whare, where there was a drinking-trough, and I stopped a moment to give the mare a mouthful of water. It was a matter of life or death for her now. To this day I feel queer when I tliink how we came down that range. It was jumping, nat galloping, and each time her lvoofs crashed down, I wondered where they would light next. I gave her her bearings vi a general way. and then left her head alone, and it was a caution to see the boulders nnd burnt totara stumps travel away from underneath us. From sheer nervousness I gave her the spur now nnd then, bnt going down hill us she was, and game to the core at any time, she hardly wanted it. Once I thought we were done, when a mnb of forty sheep got on the track in front of us. They were just shorn, nnd ns fast on their feet as dogs, and I knew they would gallop just before us, and no more, all the way, and upset the mure if she tried to get through them—and a horse will run into a mob of sheep any time, I don't know why. I took a short cut through shinghj and headed them, and thoy say those who are born to be hanged never get killed any other way. so I got through safe.

It was between seven and eight in the morning when we were racing along the flat. Slow going, you say, but think of the track! A new chum wouldn't have cared to do it at a walk. It went to my heart to force the mare, for she was pumped; but a few minutes later I came in sight of Long John again. Heavens! it was a mile or more still, and they were almost there. With the spur I found a new iilace in the mare, and lifted her, gasping up the rise. If she got through this she would have six months of nothing to do and plenty to eat. that was all. They were within coooy of the homestead when I overhauled them, and thhy thought I was standing in for fair shares in the job, for they pulled in quite peaceably and waited.

And the fight? It was just the ordinary affair and tame at that. Getting there was the job. When they began to palaver and I said I was there to see the girl wasn't harmed (I didn't care about the old man), I thought they'd have rolled out of their saddles with laughing. Long John wanted to know had Satan taken to falling in love, and his mate asked for a bit of the weddingcake. I had only just answered I would never see the girl again, if they wanted to know; I was clearing out-—to the dogs, I might have said, when they covered mc. I tickled the more with the spur. One shot went a foot wide, and tb© other hit, but nothing to .peak of. Call that shooting ! I'd have been ashamed to look a police officer in the face if I couldn't hold a gun straigliter. My first ballet went home in Long John, but as luck would have it, the next cartridge missed fire at his mate, and I slung the six-shooter Sn his face, for he was drawing a bead on mc again. His horse took fright, and I jusb saw him gallop off, when, for the first time in my life, my head got dizzy. Long John had scored an inner on my system after alu I reeled in the saddle, slithered off the maw on to the ground—end into Miss Dering'* arms! She was tHere, and heard evwy thing.

She proposed to mc, that night in tfej shanty, and I refused her, and then she said it would have to be forcible abduction, for she intended to marry mc. So this is how I turned respectable.

H.W.R.