LV

The breath was hardly out of him when a horse comes tearing through the scrub on to the little plain, with a man on his back that seemed hurt bad or drunk, he rolled in his saddle so. The head of him was bound up with a white cloth, and what you could see of it was dark-looking, with bloodstains on it. I knew the figure and the seat on a horse, though I couldn’t see his face. He didn’t seem to have much strength, but he was one of those sort of riders that can’t fall off a horse, that is unless they’re dead. Even then you’d have to pull him down. I believe he’d hang on somehow like a dead possum on a branch.

It was Warrigal!

They all knew him when he came close up, but none of the troopers raised their pieces or thought of stopping him. If a dead man had rode right into the middle of us he’d have looked like that. He stopped his horse, and slipped off on his feet somehow.

He’d had a dreadful wound, anyone could see. There was blood on the rags that bound his head all up, and being round his forehead and over his chin it made him look more and more like a corpse. Not much you could see, only his eyes, that were burning bright like two coals of fire.

Up to Starlight’s body he goes and sits himself down by it. He takes the dead man’s head into his lap, looks down at the face, and bursts out into the awfullest sort of crying and lamenting I ever heard of a living man. I’ve seen the native women mourning for their dead with the blood and tears running down their faces together. I’ve known them sit for days and nights without stirring from round a corpse, not taking a bite or sup the whole time. I’ve seen white people that’s lost an only child that had, maybe, been all life and spirits an hour before. But in all my life I have never seen no man, nor woman neither, show such regular right-down grief as Warrigal did for his master⁠—the only human creature he loved in the wide world, and him lying stiff on the ground before him.

He lifts up the dead face and wipes the blood from the lips so careful; talks to it in his own language (or leastways his mother’s) like a woman over a child. Then he sobbed and groaned and shook all over as if the very life was going out of him. At last he lays the head very soft and gentle down on the ground and looks round. Sir Ferdinand gives him his handkerchief, and he lays it over the face. Then he turns away from the men that stood round, and got up looking that despairing and wretched that I couldn’t help pitying him, though he was the cause of the whole thing as far as we could see.

Sudden as a flash of powder he pulls out a small revolver⁠—a Derringer⁠—Starlight gave him once, and holds it out to me, butt-end first.

“You shoot me, Dick Marston; you shoot me quick,” he says. “It’s all my fault. I killed him⁠—I killed the Captain. I want to die and go with him to the never-never country parson tell us about⁠—up there!”

One of the troopers knocked his hand up. Sir Ferdinand gave a nod, and a pair of handcuffs were slipped over his wrists.

“You told the police the way I went?” says I. “It’s all come out of that.”

“Thought they’d grab you at Willaroon,” says he, looking at me quite sorrowful with his dark eyes, like a child. “If you hadn’t knocked me down that last time, Dick Marston, I’d never have done nothing to you nor Jim. I forgot about the old down. That brought it all back again. I couldn’t help it, and when I see Jimmy Wardell I thought they’d catch you and no one else.”

“Well, you’ve made a clean sweep of the lot of us, Warrigal,” says I, “poor Jim and all. Don’t you ever show yourself to the old man or go back to the Hollow, if you get out of this.”

“He’s dead now. I’ll never hear him speak again,” says he, looking over to the figure on the grass. “What’s the odds about me?”

I didn’t hear any more; I must have fainted away again. Things came into my head about being taken in a cart back to Cunnamulla, with Jim lying dead on one side of me and Starlight on the other. I was only half-sensible, I expect. Sometimes I thought we were alive, and another time that the three of us were dead and going to be buried.

What makes it worse I’ve seen that sight so often since⁠—the fight on the plain and the end of it all. Just like a picture it comes back to me over and over again, sometimes in broad day, as I sit in my cell, in the darkest midnight, in the early dawn.

It rises before my eyes⁠—the bare plain, and the dead men lying where they fell; Sir Ferdinand on his horse, with the troopers standing round; and the half-caste sitting with Starlight’s head in his lap, rocking himself to and fro, and crying and moaning like a woman that’s lost her child.

I can see Jim, too⁠—lying on his face with his hat rolled off and both arms spread out wide. He never moved after. And to think that only the day before he had thought he might see his wife and child again! Poor old Jim! If I shut my eyes they won’t go away. It will be the last sight I shall see in this world before⁠—before I’m⁠—

The coroner of the district held an inquest, and the jury found a verdict of “justifiable homicide by Sir Ferdinand Morringer and other members of the police force of New South Wales in the case of one James Marston, charged with robbery under arms, and of a man habitually known as ‘Starlight,’ but of whose real name there was no evidence before the jury.” As for the police, it was wilful murder against us. Warrigal and I were remanded to Turon Court for further evidence, and as soon as we were patched up a bit by the doctor⁠—for both of us looked like making a die of it for two or three weeks⁠—we were started on horseback with four troopers overland all the way back. We went easy stages⁠—we couldn’t ride any way fast⁠—both of us handcuffed, and our horses led.

One day, about a fortnight after, as we were crossing a river, Warrigal’s horse stopped to drink. It was a swim in the middle of the stream, and the trooper, who was a young chap just from the depot, let go his leading rein for a bit. Warrigal had been as quiet as a lamb all the time, and they hadn’t a thought of his playing up. I heard a splash, and looked round; his horse’s head was turned to the bank, and, before the trooper could get out of the river, he was into the river scrub and away as fast as his horse could carry him. Both the troopers went after him, and we waited half-an-hour, and then went on to the next police station to stop till they came back.

Next day, late, they rode in with their horses regularly done and knocked up, leading his horse, but no Warrigal. He had got clear away from them in the scrub, jumped off his horse when they were out of sight, taken off his boots and made a straight track for the West Bogan scrub. There was about as much chance of running him down there as a brumbie with a day’s start or a wallaroo that was seen on a mountain side the week before last. I didn’t trouble my head that much to think whether I was glad or sorry. What did it matter? What did anything matter now? The only two men I loved in the world were dead; the two women I loved best left forsaken and disgraced; and I⁠—well, I was on my way to be hanged!

I was taken along to Turon and put into the gaol, there to await my trial. They didn’t give me much of a chance to bolt, and I wouldn’t have taken it if they had. I was dead tired of my life, and wouldn’t have taken my liberty then and there if they’d given it me. All I wanted was to have the whole thing done and over without any more bother.

It all passed like a dream. The court was crowded till there wasn’t standing room, everyone wanting to get a look at Dick Marston, the famous bushranger. The evidence didn’t take so very long. I was proved to have been seen with the rest the day the escort was robbed; the time the four troopers were shot. I was suspected of being concerned in Hagan’s party’s death, and half-a-dozen other things. Last of all, when Sub-Inspector Goring was killed, and a trooper, besides two others badly wounded.

I was sworn to as being one of the men that fired on the police. I didn’t hear a great deal of it, but ’livened up when the judge put on his black cap and made a speech, not a very long one, telling about the way the law was set at naught by men who had dared to infest the highways of the land and rob peaceful citizens with arms and violence. In the pursuit of gain by such atrocious means, blood had been shed, and murder, wilful murder, had been committed. He would not further allude to the deeds of blood with which the prisoner at the bar stood charged. The only redeeming feature in his career had been brought out by the evidence tendered in his favour by the learned counsel who defended him. He had fought fairly when opposed by the police force, and he had on more than one occasion acted in concert with the robber known as Starlight, and the brother James Marston, both of whom had fallen in a recent encounter, to protect from violence women who were helpless and in the power of his evil companions. Then the judge pronounced the sentence that I, Richard Marston, was to be taken from the place whence I came, and there hanged by the neck until I was dead. “And might God have mercy upon my soul!”

My lawyer had beforehand argued that although I had been seen in the company of persons who had doubtless compassed the unlawfully slaying of the Queen’s lieges and peace officers, yet no proof had been brought before the court that day that I had wilfully killed anyone. “He was not aware,” would his Honour remark, “that anyone had seen me fire at any man, whether since dead or alive. He would freely admit that. I had been seen in bad company, but that fact would not suffice to hang a man under British rule. It was therefore incumbent on the jury to bring in a verdict for his client of ‘not guilty.’ ”

But that cock wouldn’t fight. I was found guilty by the jury and sentenced to death by the judge. I expect I was taken back without seeing or hearing to the gaol, and I found myself alone in the condemned cell, with heavy leg-irons⁠—worn for the first time in my life. The rough and tumble of a bushranger’s life was over at last, and this was the finish up.

For the first week or two I didn’t feel anything particular. I was hardly awake. Sometimes I thought I must be dreaming⁠—that this man, sitting in a cell, quiet and dull-looking, with heavy irons on his limbs, could never be Dick Marston, the shearer, the stock-rider, the gold-miner, the bushranger.

This was the end⁠—the end⁠—the end! I used to call it out sometimes louder and louder, till the warder would come in to see if I had gone mad.

Bit by bit I came to my right senses. I almost think I felt sharper and clearer in my head than I had done for ever so long. Then I was able to realise the misery I had come down to after all our blowing and roving. This was the crush-yard and no gateway. I was safe to be hanged in six weeks, or thereabouts⁠—hanged like a dog! Nothing could alter that, and I didn’t want it if it could.

And how did the others get on, those that had their lives bound up with ours, so that we couldn’t be hurt without their bleeding, almost in their hearts?⁠—that is, mother’s bled to death, at any rate; when she heard of Jim’s death and my being taken it broke her heart clean; she never held her head up after. Aileen told me in her letter she used to nurse his baby and cry over him all day, talking about her dear boy Jim. She was laid in the burying-ground at St. Kilda. As to Aileen, she had long vowed herself to the service of the Virgin. She knew that she was committing sin in pledging herself to an earthly love. She had been punished for her sin by the death of him she loved, and she had settled in her mind to go into the convent at Soubiaca, where she should be able to wear out her life in prayer for those of her blood who still lived, as well as for the souls of those who lay in the little burying-ground on the banks of the far Warrego.

Jeanie settled to stop in Melbourne. She had money enough to keep her comfortable, and her boy would be brought up in a different style from his father.

As for Gracey, she sent me a letter in which she said she was like the bird that could only sing one song. She would remain true to me in life and death. George was very kind, and would never allow anyone to speak harshly of his former friends. We must wait and make the best of it.

So I was able, you see, to get bits of news even in a condemned cell, from time to time, about the outside world. I learned that Wall and Hulbert and Moran and another fellow were still at large, and following up their old game. Their time, like ours, was drawing short, though.

Well, this has been a thundering long yarn, hasn’t it? All my whole life I seem to have lived over again. It didn’t take so long in the telling; it’s a month today since I began. And this life itself has reeled away so quick, it hardly seems a dozen years instead of seven-and-twenty since it began. It won’t last much longer. Another week and it will be over. There’s a fellow to be strung up before me, for murdering his wife. The scoundrel, I wonder how he feels?

I’ve had visitors too; some I never thought to see inside this gaol wall. One day who should come in but Mr. Falkland and his daughter. There was a young gentleman with them that they told me was an English lord, a baronet, or something of that sort, and was to be married to Miss Falkland. She stood and looked at me with her big innocent eyes, so pitiful and kind-like. I could have thrown myself down at her feet. Mr. Falkland talked away, and asked me about this and that. He seemed greatly interested. When I told him about the last fight, and of poor Jim being shot dead, and Starlight dying alongside the old horse, the tears came into Miss Falkland’s eyes, and she cried for a bit, quite feeling and natural.

Mr. Falkland asked me all about the robbery at Mr. Knightley’s, and took down a lot of things in his pocketbook. I wondered what he did that for.

When they said goodbye Mr. Falkland shook hands with me, and said “he hoped to be able to do some good for me, but not to build anything on the strength of it.”

Then Miss Falkland came forward and held out her beautiful hand to me⁠—to me, as sure as you live⁠—like a regular thoroughbred angel, as she always was. It very nigh cooked me. I felt so queer and strange, I couldn’t have spoken a word to save my life.

Sir George, or whatever his name was, didn’t seem to fancy it over much, for he said⁠—

“You colonists are strange people. Our friend here may think himself highly favoured.”

Miss Falkland turned towards him and held up her head, looking like a queen, as she was, and says she⁠—

“If you had met me in the last place where I saw this man and his brother, you would not wonder at my avowing my gratitude to both of them. I should despise myself if I did not. Poor Jim saved my life on one occasion, and on another, but far more dreadful day, he⁠—but words, mere words, can never express my deep thankfulness for his noble conduct, and were he here now I would tell him so, and give him my hand, if all the world stood by.”

Sir George didn’t say anything after that, and she swept out of the cell, followed by Mr. Falkland and him. It was just as well for him to keep a quiet tongue in his head. I expect she was a great heiress as well as a great beauty, and people of that sort, I’ve found, mostly get listened to when they speak. When the door shut I felt as if I’d seen the wings of an angel flit through it, and the prison grew darker and darker like the place of lost souls.

LVI

One day I was told that a lady wanted to see me. When the door of the cell opened who should walk in but Aileen! I didn’t look to have seen her. I didn’t bother my head about who was coming. What did it matter, as I kept thinking, who came or who went for the week or two that was to pass before the day? Yes, the day, that Thursday, when poor Dick Marston would walk over the threshold of his cell, and never walk over one again.

The warder⁠—him that stopped with me day and night⁠—every man in the condemned cell has to be watched like that⁠—stepped outside the door and left us together. We both looked at one another. She was dressed all in black, and her face was that pale I hardly knew her at first. Then she said, “Oh, Dick⁠—my poor Dick! is this the way we meet?” and flings herself into my arms. How she cried and sobbed, to be sure. The tears ran down her cheeks like rain, and every time the leg-irons rattled she shook and trembled as if her heart was breaking.

I tried to comfort her; it was no use.

“Let me cry on, Dick,” she said; “I have not shed a tear since I first heard the news⁠—the miserable truth that has crushed all our vain hopes and fancies; my heart has nearly burst for want of relief. This will do me good. To think⁠—to think that this should be the end of all! But it is just! I cannot dare to doubt Heaven’s mercy. What else could we expect, living as we all did⁠—in sin⁠—in mortal sin? I am punished rightly.”

She told me all about poor mother’s death. She never held up her head after she heard of Jim’s death. She never said a hard word about anyone. It was God’s will, she thought, and only for His mercy things might have gone worse. The only pleasure she had in her last days was in petting Jim’s boy. He was a fine little chap, and had eyes like his father, poor old Jim! Then Aileen broke down altogether, and it was a while before she could speak again.

Jeanie was the same as she had been from the first, only so quiet they could hardly know how much she felt. She wouldn’t leave the little cottage where she had been so happy with Jim, and liked to work in the chair opposite to where Jim used to sit and smoke his pipe in the evenings. Most of her friends lived in Melbourne, and she reckoned to stay there for the rest of her life.

As to father, they had never heard a word from him⁠—hardly knew whether he was dead or alive. There was some kind of report that Warrigal had been seen making towards Nulla Mountain, looking very weak and miserable, on a knocked-up horse; but they did not know whether it was true or false.

Poor Aileen stopped till we were all locked up for the night. She seemed as if she couldn’t bear to leave me. She had no more hope or tie in life, she said. I was the only one of her people she was likely to see again, and this was the last time⁠—the last time.

“Oh, Dick! oh, my poor lost brother,” she said, “how clearly I seem to see all things now. Why could we not do so before? I have had my sinful worldly dream of happiness, and death has ended it. When I heard of his death and Jim’s my heart turned to stone. All the strength I have shall be given to religion from this out. I can ease my heart and mortify the flesh for the good of my soul. To God⁠—to the Holy Virgin⁠—who hears the sorrows of such as me, I can pray day and night for their souls’ welfare⁠—for mine, for yours. And oh, Dick! think when that day, that dreadful day, comes that Aileen is praying for you⁠—will pray for you till her own miserable life ends. And now goodbye; we shall meet on this earth no more. Pray⁠—say that you will pray⁠—pray now that we may meet in heaven.”

She half drew me to my knees. She knelt down herself on the cold stone floor of the cell; and I⁠—well⁠—I seemed to remember the old days when we were both children and used to kneel down by mother’s bed, the three of us, Aileen in the middle and one of us boys on each side. The old time came back to me, and I cried like a child.

I wasn’t ashamed of it; and when she stood up and said, “Goodbye⁠—goodbye, Dick,” I felt a sort of rushing of the blood to my head, and all my wounds seemed as if they would break out again. I very near fell down, what with one thing and another. I sat myself down on my bed, and I hid my face in my hands. When I looked up she was gone.

After that, day after day went on and I scarcely kept count, until somehow I found out it was the last week. They partly told me on the Sunday. The parson⁠—a good, straight, manly man he was⁠—he had me told for fear I should go too close up to it, and not have time to prepare.

Prepare! How was a man like me to prepare? I’d done everything I’d a mind to for years and years. Some good things⁠—some bad⁠—mostly bad. How was I to repent? Just to say I was sorry for them. I wasn’t that particular sorry either⁠—that was the worst of it. A deal of the old life was dashed good fun, and I’d not say, if I had the chance, that I wouldn’t do just the same over again.

But didn’t I feel that it hadn’t paid? That we should have been fifty times better off by sticking to honest work, and not had to bear the frightful fear and anxiousness poisoning every hour and day of our lives? Yes! I did feel that. What was the profit of it all? A few short years, with a deal of hard work, hiding and danger crowded into it; very little pleasure, and the lot of us dead or dying to finish up with.

Sometimes I felt as if I ought to understand what the parson tried to hammer into my head; but I couldn’t do anything but make a jumble of it. It came natural to me to do some things, and I did them. If I had stopped dead and bucked at father’s wanting me and Jim to help duff those weaners, I really believe all might have come right. Jim said afterwards he’d made up his mind to have another try at getting me to join with George Storefield in that fencing job. After that we could have gone into the outside station work with him⁠—just the thing that would have suited the pair of us; and what a grand finish we might have made of it if we ran a waiting race; and where were we now?⁠—Jim dead, Aileen dead to the world, and me to be hanged on Thursday, poor mother dead and brokenhearted before her time. We couldn’t have done worse. We might, we must have, done better.

I did repent in that sort of way of all we’d done since that first wrong turn. It’s the wrong turnoff that makes a man lose his way; but as for the rest I had only a dull, heavy feeling that my time was come, and I must make the best of it, and meet it like a man.

So the day came. The last day! What a queer feeling it was when I lay down that night, that I should never want to sleep again, or try to do it. That I had seen the sun set⁠—leastways the day grow dark⁠—for the last time; the very last time.

Somehow I wasn’t that much in fear of it as you might think; it was strange like, but made one pull himself together a bit. Thousands and millions of people had died in all sorts of ways and shapes since the beginning of the world. Why shouldn’t I be able to go through with it like another?

I was a long time lying and thinking before I thought of sleeping. All the small, teeny bits of a man’s life, as well as the big, seemed to come up before me as I lay there⁠—the first things I could recollect at Rocky Flat; then the pony; mother a youngish woman; father always hard-looking, but so different from what he came to be afterwards. Aileen a little girl, with her dark hair falling over her shoulders; then a grown woman, riding her own horse, and full of smiles and fun; then a pale, weeping woman all in black, looking like a mourner at a funeral. Jim too, and Starlight⁠—now galloping along through the forest at night⁠—laughing, drinking, enjoying themselves at Jonathan Barnes’s, with the bright eyes of Bella and Maddie shining with fun and devilment.

Then both of them lying dead at the flat by Murrynebone Creek⁠—Starlight with the half-caste making his wild moan over him; Jim, quiet in death as in life, lying in the grass, looking as if he had slid off his horse in that hot weather to take a banje; and now, no get away, the rope⁠—the hangman!

I must have gone to sleep, after all, for the sun was shining into the cell when I stirred, and I could see the chains on my ankles that I had worn all these weary weeks. How could I sleep? but I had, for all that. It was daylight; more than that⁠—sunrise. I listened, and, sure enough, I heard two or three of the bush-birds calling. It reminded me of being a boy again, and listening to the birds at dawn just before it was time to get up. When I was a boy!⁠—was I ever a boy? How long was it ago⁠—and now⁠—O my God, my God! That ever it should have come to this! What am I waiting for to hear now? The tread of men; the smith that knocks the irons off the limbs that are so soon to be as cold as the jangling chains. Yes! at last I hear their footsteps⁠—here they come!

The warder, the blacksmith, the parson, the head gaoler, just as I expected. The smith begins to cut the rivets. Somehow they none of them look so solemn as I expected. Surely when a man is to be killed by law, choked to death in cold blood, people might look a bit serious. Mind you, I believe men ought to be hanged. I don’t hold with any of that rot that them as commits murder shouldn’t pay for it with their own lives. It’s the only way they can pay for it, and make sure they don’t do it again. Some men can stand anything but the rope. Prison walls don’t frighten them; but Jack Ketch does. They can’t gammon him.

“Knock off his irons quick,” says Mr. Fairleigh, the parson; “he will not want them again just yet.”

“I didn’t think you would make a joke of that sort, sir,” says I. “It’s a little hard on a man, ain’t it? But we may as well take it cheerful, too.”

“Tell him all, Mr. Strickland,” he says to the head gaoler. “I see he can bear it now.”

“Prisoner Richard Marston,” says the gaoler, standing up before me, “it becomes my duty to inform you that, owing to representations made in your favour by the Hon. Mr. Falkland, the Hon. Mr. Storefield, and other gentlemen who have interested themselves in your case, setting forth the facts that, although mixed up with criminals and known to be present when the escort and various other cases of robbery under arms have taken place, wherein life has been taken, there is no distinct evidence of your having personally taken life. On the other hand, in several instances, yourself, with the late James Marston and the deceased person known as Starlight, have aided in the protection of life and property. The Governor and the Executive Council have therefore graciously been pleased to commute your sentence of death to that of fifteen years’ imprisonment.”

When I came to I was lying on my blankets in a different cell, as I could see by the shape of it. The irons didn’t rattle when I moved. I was surprised when I looked and saw they were took off. Bit by bit it all came back to me. I was not to be hanged. My life was saved, if it was worth saving, by the two or three good things we’d done in our time, and almost, I thought, more for poor old Jim’s sake than my own.

Was I glad or sorry now it was all over? I hardly knew. For a week or two I felt as if they’d better have finished me off when I was ready and ha’ done with me, but after a while I began to feel different. Then the gaoler talked to me a bit. He never said much to prisoners, and what he said he meant.

“Prisoner Marston,” says he, “you’d better think over your situation and don’t mope. Make up your mind like a man. You may have friends that you’d like to live for. Pull yourself together and face your sentence like a man. You’re a young man now, and you won’t be an old one when you’re let out. If your conduct is uniformly good you’ll be out in twelve years. Settle yourself to serve that⁠—and you’re a lucky man to have no more⁠—and you may have some comfort in your life yet.”

Then he went out. He didn’t wait to see what effect it had on me. If I wasn’t a fool, he thought to himself, I must take it in; if I was, nothing would do me any good.

I took his advice, and settled myself down to think it over. It was a good while⁠—a weary lot of years to wait, year by year⁠—but, still, if I got out in twelve years I should not be so out and out broke down after all⁠—not much over forty, and there’s a deal of life for a man sometimes after that.

And then I knew that there would be one that would be true to me anyhow, that would wait for me when I went out, and that would not be too proud to join in her life with mine, for all that had come and gone. Well, this might give me strength. I don’t think anything else could, and from that hour I made up my mind to tackle it steady and patient, to do the best I could, and to work out my sentence, thankful for the mercy that had been showed me, and, if ever a man was in this world, resolved to keep clear of all cross ways for the future.

So I began to steady myself and tried to bear it the best way I could. Other men were in for long sentences, and they seemed to be able to keep alive, so why shouldn’t I? Just at the first I wasn’t sure whether I could. Year after year to be shut up there, with the grass growin’ and the trees wavin’ outside, and the world full of people, free to walk or ride, to work or play, people that had wives and children, and friends and relations⁠—it seemed awful. That I should be condemned to live in this shut-up tomb all those long, weary years, and there was nothing else for it. I couldn’t eat or sleep at first, and kept starting up at night, thinking they was coming for me to carry me off to the gallows. Then I’d dream that Jim and Starlight was alive, and that we’d all got out of gaol and were riding through the bush at night to the Hollow again. Then I’d wake up and know they were dead and I was here. Time after time I’ve done that, and I was that broken down and low that I burst out crying like a child.

After a bit I got better, and began to get settled into the life that was before me. The first thing I did was to take up a trade. I’d always been a decentish hand at bush carpentering, so I took up the trade in earnest and very soon learned how to do the finer bits of work that I never durst tackle when I was free. It kept me from thinking too much, and tired me so as I could sleep sound, and when the warder that was over the working prisoners praised me and said I was the best working chap of the lot I felt quite pleased. Pleased! think of that. I wouldn’t have believed it of myself.

Somehow or other we got to hear all the news that was going from time to time. I used to hear about Wall and Hulbert and Moran, everything they did, and every time the police chased ’em. Sir Ferdinand made up his mind one night that he’d got Joe Wall quite to rights. He and his men surrounded the hut he was in. They’d got information from the man that used to bring him rations, and they were safe to have him as soon as he came out. Sir Ferdinand was that set on taking him himself that he ordered his men not to fire. Just about daylight out comes Wall on a gray horse; he rides almost up to Sir Ferdinand before he sees him, who calls out “Stand!” and pulls trigger on him. Dashed if his revolver didn’t misfire, and Wall goes from the jump, and gets clean off. However, Wall⁠—and he wasn’t a bad sort neither; never did an unmanly act that I know of⁠—didn’t last long. The police surrounded another hut they’d tracked him to that night, and Inspector Merlin⁠—he was a cool card, if you like⁠—shot him clean through the body with a green cartridge out of his breechloader. The men gave him a volley besides, and there was three-and-twenty bullets in him when he was turned over. Hulbert was caught much in the same way, and shot down without giving him a chance.

Moran took to doing business on his own hook after that, and got right away down south, below Wagga Wagga and opposite Narrandera, in the pine scrubs about there, and then he’d take a run to Albury, and cross into Victoria. I always knew he’d do that once too often. He was such a cruel devil, too, and he seemed to get worse and worse.

One day he stuck up Bateson’s woolshed at Round Hill. There was twenty or thirty shearers there; but when he marched in with his revolver pointed at the crowd, and said, “I’m Moran,” there wasn’t a man among ’em as had the pluck to rise a rush. One or two might have been hit, and nobody liked to be them. That was about the size of it. It don’t say much for the working men that one fellow with a pistol can make a couple of dozen of ’em go on their knees almost. But it isn’t want of spirit as some people might think, only they’ve got so into the way of thinking it’s the work of the police to do all that kind of thing, and that it’s none of their business. When they think it’s good enough they can fight fast enough, and stand the steel spurs, too.

However, Moran, after they’d all given in, began to bully as usual, and got out the rum and made all of them have a glass of grog or two, including Sam Battson, the manager. He was going away all right, when Sam calls out to him, “Where did you get your spurs, Moran?” or some such nonsense. The grog must have got into his head.

Moran turns round and fires point blank at him. He put up his hand, and the bullet went slap through the palm of it. Then he fires another shot at random into the crowd. It went through the ankle of a poor young colonial-experience lad, and left him groaning and moaning with the pain.

Moran seemed sorry for this like, and told another youngster he might go for the Doctor. So the young fellow gets his horse and rides away along the road towards where the Doctor lived.

Moran takes a sudden thought a few minutes after, and starts off at full gallop himself. He pulls up the young chap on the road, and pulls out his pistol. “You’re not going for the doctor, blast you,” says he; “you’re going for the police,” and before the poor young chap has time to answer he shoots him dead⁠—dead. There was no mistake about that. Now, a man who could do that must either be mad, or one of the cruellest brutes that ever lived.

Next week he suddenly gallops up alongside Sergeant M’Gillicuddy, and shoots him dead before he had time to draw his pistol, or say one word. But his time was pretty close up. One day he sneaked up to a station on the Victoria side of the river; he was always crawling about like a Red Indian, and sticks it up. He made himself a great man, and played up all his old tricks. He helped himself to the best, and made the young ladies play to him on the piano, and all that sort of thing. While he was enjoying himself the New South Wales police came up on his tracks and surrounded the house. He made pretty sure no one left the house, he thought, but in spite of his cunning, a smart lass of a servant girl crept out of the house and told the people outside all about him. Some of the station hands had come up too, and when he walked out of the house at daylight one of the men, who was a good rifle shot let him have it, and down went Dan Moran with a bullet through him.

When they got round him there he was safe enough, like a hawk with his wing broken, ready enough for mischief, but not up to it. He made a great barney about being shot without warning, but what warning had he ever given to lots of people that he shot or come down sudden on. No! he was like a dingo in a trap, or a snake with his back broken on the coals. He might growl or hiss or writhe about, but nobody pitied him, not even men like us. He was a cruel, treacherous, unmanly brute, and he came to his end just the very way as Starlight said he would after that affair at Kadumbla.

I expected every day to hear that Billy the Boy had got caught and had up for something. The young scamp was going the road to the gallows as fast as he could split, but one day he got a check. That put the fear of God in his heart and he never chanced it, I believe, on the sticking up lay from that day to this.

The way it came about was this: He and another fellow, a sort of offside bushranger chap, named Withers, were out seeing what they could do on the quiet, meaning to go back home and pretend to be working on their farms as usual. They saw old Mr. Wilbertree coming along in his buggy, and knowing he always carried a gold watch and was never without a few notes and sovereigns, they settled to have him. So they put on their masks and rode up to him from behind a rise, just on a bit of open ground, and bailed him up.

Now the old gentleman was as brave as a lion and very fond of shooting. He mostly carried his double-barrel with him in the buggy, ready for a wild turkey or a couple of black duck. It was lying on the rug between his feet, and they didn’t see it, being rather nervous. Shows how hard it is for a man to be up to everything. The old gentleman gets out quiet enough; but as he does, he pulls the gun after him, and lets drive from the hip at Withers. He got the cartridge full in the chest, and tumbles off his horse a dead man. Billy was off like a red shank, screwing his shoulders as he went, and never looked behind him expecting the second. Mr. Wilbertree could have dropped him easy enough with the other barrel; but he was a tenderhearted old chap, with all his courage, and he thought to himself, “Well, he’s a young fellow, he may mend; let him have his chance.” And so he let him slide. So that accounted for another one of the lot. I believe the old gentleman was nervous for a long while after, and quite grieved to have to take a fellow-creature’s life. I wouldn’t have cared a rap if I’d been him. No! not if I’d shot ten like him, any more than if they’d been dingoes. Men like us are as bad as dingoes, often a plaguey sight worse, and the sooner they’re hanged or shot the better. That’s my tip, and I don’t care who sees it. It’s a queer thing, but the only people that ever showed fight against us, except the police, were the gentlemen⁠—the swells, as we called them⁠—and a good share of the fellows shot dropped to their guns.

The regular station hands, the small farmers, the labourers, didn’t trouble their heads about us. They’d eat out of the same dish, and there was no chance of their informing against us unless they had some very particular reason of their own. They’d rather help us a bit, and often did.