Mere impulse and swift natural reaction
from their former enforced inactivity rather than any hope of success
had sent them hot-foot on the pursuit. The noisy, windy night, the
absolute dark, obviated all possibility of coming up with him. Grumbling
and theorising, they returned to the room and closed the door behind
them.
Now that the tense moment of the actual robbery had passed there was a
general buzzing talk, voices lifted in surmise, a lively excitement
replacing the cosy quiet of a few moments ago. Voices from the spare bed
room urged Ma Drury to bring an account of the adventure, and Poke's
wife, having first escorted the wounded man to her own bed and donned a
wrapper and shoes and stockings, gave to Lew Yates's women folk as
circumstantial a description of the whole affair as though she herself
had witnessed it.
After a while a man here and there began to eat, taking a slab of bread
and meat in one hand and a cup of black coffee in the other, walking
back and forth and talking thickly. The girl at the fireplace sat stiff
and still, staring at the flames; she had lost her appetite, had quite
forgotten it in fact. At first from under the hand shading her eyes she
watched the men going for one drink after another, the strong drink of
the frontier; but after a little, as though this had been a novel sight
in the beginning but soon lost interest for her, she let her look droop
to the fire.
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