told Julia to fasten the door, and to open it on no account whatever,
while he went for the horse, which was feeding in the Rises hobbled,
and with a bell tied round his neck. When he returned he saddled the
animal, and Julia held the bridle while he went into the hut for the
body. He observed Baldy's pipe on the floor near the fire-place, and
he replaced it in the pocket in which it had been usually kept, as it
might not be safe to leave anything in the hut belonging to the
murdered man. There was a little blood on the floor, but he would
scrape that off by daylight, and he would then also look at the axe
and put away the two bottles of gin somewhere; he could do all that
next morning before Baldy was missed. But the corpse must be taken
away at once, for he felt that every minute of delay might endanger
his neck. He dragged the body outside, and with Julia's help lifted
it up and placed it across the saddle. Then he tried to steady his
load with his right hand, and to guide the horse by the bridle with
his left, but he soon found that a dead man was a bad rider; Baldy
kept slipping towards the near side or the off side with every stride
of the horse, and soon fell to the ground.
Nosey was in a furious hurry, he was anxious to get away; he cursed
Baldy for giving him so much trouble; he could have killed him over
again for being so awkward and stubborn, and he begun to feel that
the old shepherd was more dangerous dead than alive. At last he
mounted his horse, and called to Julia to come and help him.
"Here, Julia, lift him up till I catch hold of his collar, and I'll
pull him up in front of me on the saddle, and hold him that way."
Julia, with many stifled moans, raised the body from the ground,
Nosey reached down and grasped the shirt collar, and thus the two
managed to place the swag across the saddle. Then Nosey made a
second start, carefully balancing the body, and keeping it from
falling with his right hand, while he held the bridle with his left.
The funeral procession slowly wound its way in a westerly direction
among the black rocks over the softest and smoothest ground to avoid
making any noise. There was no telling what stockman or
cattle-stealer the devil might send at any moment to meet the
murderer among the lonely Rises, and even in the darkness his
horrible burden would betray him. Nosey was disturbed by the very
echo of his horse's steps; it seemed as if somebody was following him
at a little distance; perhaps Julia, full of woman's curiosity; and
he kept peering round and looking back into the darkness. In this
way he travelled about a mile and a half, and then dismounting,
lowered the body to the ground, and began to look for some suitable
hiding place. He chose one among a confused heap of rocks, and by
lifting some of them aside he made a shallow grave, to which he
dragged the body, and covered it by piling boulders over and around
it. He struck several matches to enable him to examine his work
carefully, and closed up every crevice through which his buried
treasure might be visible.
The next morning Nosey was astir early. He had an important part to
act, and he was anxious to do it well. He first examined the axe and
cleaned it well, carefully burning a few of Baldy's grey hairs which
he found on it. Then he searched the floor for drops of blood, which
he carefully scraped with a knife, and washed until no red spot was
visible. Then he walked to Baldy's and pretended to himself that he
was surprised to find it empty. What had happened the previous night
was only a dream, an ugly dream. He met an acquaintance and told him
that Baldy was neither in his hut nor with his sheep.
The two men called at old Sharp's hut to make enquiries. The latter
said, "I seen Baldy's sheep yesterday going about in mobs, and nobody
to look after them." Then the three men went to the deserted hut.
Everything in it seemed undisturbed. The dog was watching at the
door, and they told him to seek Baldy. He pricked up his ears,
wagged his tail, and looked wistfully in the direction of Nosey's
hut, evidently expecting his master to come in sight that way.
The men went to the nearest magistrate and informed him that the
shepherd was missing. A messenger went to the head station.
Enquiries were made at the township, and it was found that Baldy had
been to Nyalong the previous day, and had left in the evening
carrying two bottles of gin. This circumstance seemed to account for
his absence; he had taken too much of the liquor, was lying asleep
somewhere, and would reappear in the course of the day. Men both on
foot and on horseback roamed through the Rises, examining the hollows
and the flats, the margins of the shallow lakes, and peering into
every wombat hole as they passed. They never thought of turning over
any of the boulders; a drunken man would never make his bed and
blanket of rocks; he would be found lying on the top if he had
stumbled amongst them. One by one as night approached the searchers
returned to the hut. They had discovered nothing, and the only
conclusion they could come to was, that Baldy was taking a very long
sleep somewhere--which was true enough.
Next day every man from the neighbouring stations, and some from
Nyalong, joined in the search. The chief constable was there, and as
became a professed detector of crime, he examined everything minutely
inside and outside the two huts, but he could not find anything
suspicious about either of them. He entered into conversation with
Julia, but the eye of her husband was on her, and she had little to
say. Nosey, on the contrary, was full of suggestions as to what
might have happened to Baldy, and he helped to look for him eagerly
and actively in every direction but the right one.
For many days the Rises were peopled with prospectors, but one by one
they dropped away. The chief constable was loath to leave the riddle
unsolved; he had the instinct of the sleuth-hound on the scent of
blood. He had been a pursuer of bad works amongst the convicts for a
long time, both in Van Diemen's Land and in Victoria, and had helped
to bring many men to the gallows or the chain-gang. He had once been
shot in the back by a horse thief who lay concealed behind the door
of a shepherd's hut, but he secured the horse thief. He was a man
without nerves, of medium height, strongly built, had a broad face,
massive ears, wide, firm mouth, and strong jaws.
One night after the searchers had departed to their various homes,
the chief remained alone in the Rises, and leaving his horse hobbled
at a distance, cautiously approached Nosey's hut. He placed his ear
to the outside of the weatherboards, and listened for some time to
the conversation of Nosey and his wife, expecting to obtain by chance
some information about the disappearance of the other shepherd.
Nosey was in a bad temper, swearing and finding fault with
everything. Julia was prudent and said little; it was best not to
say too much to a man who was so handy with the family axe. But at
last she made use of one expression which seemed to mean something.
She said, "Oh, Nosey, you murdering villain, you know you ought to be
hanged." There was a prophetic ring in these words which delighted
the chief constable, and he glued his great ear to the weatherboards,
eagerly listening for more; but the wrangling pair were very
disappointing; they would not keep to the point. At last he walked
round the hut, suddenly opened the door, and entered. Nosey was
struck dumb at once. His first thought was that his plan had been
sprung, and that the murder was out. The chief addressed Julia in a
tone of authority, imitating the counsel for the crown when examining
a prevaricating witness.
"Now, missus, remember you will be put on your oath. You said just
now, 'Oh, Nosey, you murdering villain, you know you ought to be
hanged.' Those were your very words. Now what did you mean? On
your oath, mind; out with it at once."
But Julia was not to be caught so easily. She replied:
"Oh, bad luck to him, he is always angry. I don't know what to do
with him. I did not mean anything."
"You did not mean anything about Baldy, I suppose, did you, now?"
queried the constable, shamefully leading the witness, and looking
hard at Nosey.
Julia parried the question by heaving a deep sigh, and saying: "Hi,
ho, Harry, if I were a maid, I never would marry;" and then she began
singing a silly old song.
The constable was disgusted, and said:
"My good woman, you'll find there will be nothing to laugh at in this
job, when I see you again."
As he left the hut, he turned at the door and gave one more look at
Nosey, who had stood all the time rivetted to the ground, expecting
every moment that the constable would produce the handcuffs. Soon
afterwards Julia went outside, walked round the hut, and stayed
awhile, listening and looking in every direction. When she returned,
Nosey said, in a hoarse whisper:
"Is he gan yet?"
"I think," replied Julia, "he won't be coming again to-night. He has
thrown away his trouble this time, anyhow; but ye must hould your
tongue, Nosey, if ye want to save your neck; he means to have you if
he can."
Nosey stayed on the run some weeks longer, following his sheep. It
would not be advisable to go away suddenly, and, moreover, he
recollected that what the eye could not see might some time be
discovered by another of the senses. So he waited patiently,
standing guard as it were over the dead, until his curiosity induced
him to pay a farewell visit by daylight to the place where Baldy was
buried.
There had been hot weather since the body had been deposited in the
shallow grave, and the crevices among the piles of bluestones had
been filled by the wind with the yellow stalks of decayed grass.
Nosey walked round his own particular pile, and inspected it closely.
He was pleased to find that it showed no signs of having been touched
since he raised it. It was just like any of the other heaps of rocks
around it. He had, at any rate, given Baldy as good a funeral as
circumstances would permit, better than that of many a man who had
perished of hunger, heat, and thirst, in the shelterless wastes of
the Never-Never Land, "beyond Moneygrub's farthest run." Nosey and
the weather had done their work so well that for the next fifteen
years no shepherd, stockman, or squatter ever gave a second look at
that unknown grave. The black snake coiled itself beneath the
decaying skeleton, and spent the winter in secure repose. The native
cat tore away bits of Baldy's clothing, and with them and the yellow
grass made, year after year, a nest for its young among the whitening
bones.
Everything, so far, had turned out quite as satisfactorily as any
murderer could expect. Nosey had been game to do his man, and he had
done him well. Julia was prudent enough to hold her tongue for her
own sake; it was unlikely that any further search would be made for
the lost shepherd; he had been safely put out of sight, and not even
Julia knew where he was buried.
Nosey began to have a better opinion of himself than ever. Neither
the police nor the law could touch him. He would never be called to
account for putting away his brother shepherd, in this world at any
rate; and as for the next, why it was a long way off, and there was
time enough to think about it. The day of reckoning was distant, but
it came at last, as it always does to every sinner of us all.
Nosey resigned his billet, and went to Nyalong. He lived in a hut in
the eastern part of the township, not far from the lake, and near the
corner of the road coming down from the Bald Hill. Here had been
laid the foundation of a great inland city by a bush publican, two
storekeepers, a wheelwright, and a blacksmith. Another city had been
started at the western side of Wandong Creek, but its existence was
ignored by the eastern pioneers.
The shepherd soon began to forget or despise the advice of his wife,
Julia; his tongue grew loose again, and at the bar of the inn of the
crossroads his voice was often heard loud and abusive. He felt that
he had become a person of importance, as the possessor of a secret
which nobody could discover. What he said and what he did was
discussed about the township, and the chief constable listened to
every report, expecting that some valuable information would
accidentally leak out.
One day a man wearing a blue jumper and an old hat came down the
road, stepped on to the verandah of the inn, and threw down his swag.
Nosey was there, holding forth to Bill the Butcher, Dick Smalley,
Frank Barton, Bob Atkins, Charley Goodall, and George Brown the Liar.
A dispute occurred, in which the presumptuous stranger joined, and
Nosey promptly knocked him off the verandah into the gutter. A valid
claim to satisfaction was thus established, and the swagman showed a
disposition to enforce it. He did not attempt to regain his position
on the boards, but took his stand on the broad stone of honour in the
middle of the road. He threw up his hat into the air, and began
walking rapidly to and fro, clenched his fists, stiffened his sinews,
and at every turn in his walk said:
"You'll find me as good a man as ever you met in your life."
This man's action promised real sport, and true Britons as we all
were we were delighted to see him. Nosey stood on the verandah for a
minute or two, watching the motions of the swagman; he did not seem
to recollect all at once what the code of honour required, until Bill
the Butcher remarked, "He wants you, Nosey," then Nosey went.
The two men met in the middle of the road, and put up their hands.
They appeared well-matched in size and weight. The swagman said:
"You'll find me as good a man as ever you met in your life."
Nosey began the battle by striking out with his right and left, but
his blows did not seem to reach home, or to have much effect.
The swagman dodged and parried, and soon put in a swinging blow on
the left temple. Nosey fell to the ground, and the stranger resumed
his walk as before, uttering his war cry:
"You'll find me as good a man as ever you met in your life."
There were no seconds, but the rules of chivalry were strictly
observed; the stranger was a true gentleman, and did not use his
boots.
In the second round Nosey showed more caution, but the result was the
same, and it was brought about by another hard blow on the temple.
The third round finished the fight. Nosey lay on the ground so long
that Bill, the Butcher, went over to look at him, and then he threw
up the sponge--metaphorically--as there was no sponge, nor any
need of one.
The defeated Nosey staggered towards his hut, and his temper was
afterwards so bad that Julia declined to stay with him any longer;
she loosed the marriage bonds without recourse to law, and
disappeared. Her husband went away westward, but he did not stay
long. He returned to Nyalong and lived awhile alone in his hut there,
but he was restless and dissatisfied. Everybody looked at him so
curiously. Even the women and children stood still as he passed by
them, and began whispering to one another, and he guessed well enough
why they were looking at him and what they were saying--"That's
Nosey the murderer; he killed Baldy and hid him away somewhere; his
wife said he ought to be hanged, and she has run away and left him."
When the hungry hawk comes circling over the grove of crookedy gum in
which two magpies are feeding their callow young, the bush is soon
filled with cries of alarm. The plump quail hides himself in the
depths of a thick tussock; the bronze-winged pigeon dives into the
shelter of the nearest scrub, while all the noisiest scolds of the
air gather round the intruder. Every magpie, minah, and wattle-bird
within a mile joins in the clamour. They dart at the hawk as he
flies from tree to tree. When he alights on a limb they give him no
peace; they flap their wings in his face, and call him the worst of
names. Even the Derwent Jackass, the hypocrite with the shining
black coat and piercing whistle, joins in the public outcry, and his
character is worse than that of the hawk himself, for he has been
caught in the act of kidnapping and devouring the unfledged young of
his nearest neighbour. The distracted hawk has at length to retreat
dinnerless to the swampy margin of the river where the tallest
tea-trees wave their feathery tops in the wind.
In like manner the human hawk was driven from the township. He
descended in the scale of crime, stole a horse, and departed by night.
Bill, the butcher, said next day: "Nosey has gone for good this
time. He will ride that horse to death and then steal another."
At this time I rode through the Rises and called at the two huts; I
found them occupied by two shepherds not unlike the former tenants,
who knew little and cared less what had become of their predecessors.
Time empties thrones and huts impartially, and the king feels no
pride in his monument of marble, nor the shepherd any shame beneath
the shapeless cairn which hides his bones.
At this time the old races both of men and animals were dying out
around Lake Nyalong, and others were taking their places. The last
black child ever seen in the township was brought by its mother to
the hut of a white woman. It was naked and very dirty, and she laid
it down on the clay floor. The white woman's heart was moved with
pity at the sight of the miserable little bairn. She took it up,
washed it with warm water and soap, wrapped it in flannel, and gave
it back to the mother. But the lubra was loath to receive it. She
said, "Black picaninny all die. No good; white picaninny live."
The kangaroo, wombat, and dingo were fast dying out, as well a the
blackfellow. We could all see well enough how the change was brought
about. Millions of years ago, new species may have been evolved out
of the old species, but nothing of the kind happens now. The white
men of Australia were not evolved out of the black men. There are no
family ties, and never will be, between the kangaroo, the wombat and
wallaby, and their successors, the cattle, the sheep, and the goats.
We can kill species, but we can't create any.
The rabbit, destined to bring Nosey to the gallows, was a favoured
animal on Austin's station at the Barwon. It was a privilege to
shoot him--in small quantities--he was so precious. But he soon
became, as the grammar says, a noun of multitude. He swarmed on the
plains, hopped over the hills, burrowed among the rocks in the Rises,
and nursed his multitudinous progeny in every hollow log of the
forest. Neither mountain, lake, or river ever barred his passage.
He ate up all the grass and starved the pedigree cattle, the
well-born dukes and duchesses, and on tens of thousands of fertile
acres left no food to keep the nibbling sheep alive. Every hole and
crevice of the rocks was full of him. An uninvited guest, he dropped
down the funnel-shaped entrance to the den of the wombat, and made
himself at home with the wild cat and snake. He clothed the hills
with a creeping robe of fur, and turned the Garden of the West into a
wilderness. Science may find a theory to account for the beginning
of all things, but among all her triumphs she has been unable to put
an end to the rabbit. War has been made upon them by fire, dynamite,
phosphorus, and all deadly poisons; by dogs, cats, weasels, foxes,
and ferrets, but he still marches over the land triumphantly.
For fifteen years Nosey roamed from station to station under various
names, between Queensland and the Murray, but wherever he went, the
memory of his crime never left him. He had been taught in his
boyhood that murder was one of the four sins crying to heaven for
vengeance, and he knew that sooner or later the cry would be heard.
Sometimes he longed to unburden his mind to a priest, but he seldom
saw or heard of one. The men with whom he worked and wandered were
all like himself--lost souls who had taken the wrong turn in the
beginning of their days, the failures of all trades and professions;
thieves, drunkards, and gamblers; criminals who had fled from
justice; men of pleasure and, therefore, of misery; youths of good
family exported from England, Ireland, and Scotland to mend their
morals, to study wool, and become rich squatters. All these men get
colonial experience, but it does not make them saintly or rich. Here
and there, all over the endless plains, they at last lie down and
die, the dingoes hold inquests over them, and, literally, they go to
the dogs, because they took the wrong turn in life and would not come
back.
In 1868 Nosey and his two mates were approaching a station on the
Lachlan. Since sunrise they had travelled ten miles without
breakfast, and were both hungry and weary. They put down their swags
in the shade of a small grove of timber within sight of the station
buildings. Bob Castles said:
"I was shearing in them sheds in '52 when old Shenty owned the run.
He was a rum old miser, he was, would skin two devils for one hide;
believe he has gone to hell; hope so, at any rate. He couldn't read
nor write much, but he could make money better'n any man I ever heard
of. Bought two runs on the Murray, and paid 180,000 pounds for 'em
in one cheque. He kept a lame schoolmaster to write his cheques and
teach his children, gave him 40 pounds a year, the same as a
shepherd. Lived mostly on mutton all the year round; never killed no
beef for the station, but now and then an old bullock past work,
salted him down in the round swamp for a change o' grub. Never grew
no cabbage or wegetables, only a paddock of potatoes. Didn't want no
visitors, 'cos he was afraid they'd want to select some of his run.
Wanted everything to look as poor and miserable as possible. He put
on a clean shirt once a week, on Sabbath to keep it holy, and by way
of being religious. Kept no fine furniture in the house, only a big
hardwood table, some stools, and candle boxes. After supper old
Mother Shenty scraped the potato skins off the table into her apron
--she always boiled the potatoes in their jackets--and then Shenty
lay down on it and smoked his pipe till bedtime, thinking of the best
way to keep down expenses. A parson came along one day lifting a
subscription for a church, or school, or something. He didn't get
anything out of old Shenty, only a pannikin of tea and some damper
and mutton. The old cove said: 'Church nor school never gave me
nothing, nor do me no good, and I could buy up a heap o' parsons and
schoolmasters if I wanted to, and they were worth buying. Us
squatters is the harrystockrisy out here. The lords at home sends
out their good-for-nothing sons to us, to get rich and be out of the
way, and much good they does. Why don't you parsons make money by
your eddication if it's any good, instead of goin' round beggin'?
You are all after the filthy lucre, wantin' to live on other folks.'
I was holdin' the parson's horse, and when he got into the saddle, he
turns to old Shenty, and says: 'From rottenness you sprung, and to
rottenness you'll go. Your money will drag you down to hell; you'll
want to throw it away, but it will burn into your soul for all
eternity.'
"I am mortal hungry," continued Bob, "and they don't give no rations
until about sundown, and we'll have to wait six hours. It's hard
lines. I see there's an orchard there now, and most likely a
wegtable garden--and cabbages. I'd like some boiled beef and
cabbage. It wouldn't be no harm to try and get somethin' to eat,
anyhow. What do you say, Ned? You was a swell cove once, and knows
how to talk to the quality. Go and try 'em."
Ned went and talked to the "quality" so well that he brought back
rations for three.
Towards the end of the year Nosey arrived at Piney Station, about
forty miles from the Murray, and obtained employment. Baldy's bones
had been lying under the rocks for nearly fifteen years. It was
absurd to suppose they could ever be discovered now, or if they were,
that any evidence could be got out of them. Nosey felt sure that all
danger for himself was passed, but still the murder was frequently in
his mind. The squatter was often lonely, and his new man was
garrulous, and one day Nosey, while at work, began to relate many
particulars of life in the old country, in Van Diemen's Land, and in
the other colonies, and he could not refrain from mentioning the
greatest of his exploits.
"I once done a man in Victoria," he said, "when I was shepherding; he
found me out taking his fat sheep, and was going to inform on me, so
I done him with an axe, and put him away so as nobody could ever find
him."
The squatter thought that Nosey's story was mostly blowing,
especially that part of it referring to the murder. No man who had
really done such a deed, would be so foolish as to confess it to a
stranger.
Another man was engaged to work at the station. As soon as he saw
Nosey he exclaimed, "Hello, Nosey, is that you?"
"My name is not Nosey."
"All right; a name is nothing. We are old chums, anyway."