upon the Sunday morning was the largest which had ever occurred in the
annals of Jackman's Gulch. At first it was thought that the whole
population was present, but a little reflection showed that this was not
so. Maule and Phillips had gone on a prospecting journey among the
hills, and had not returned as yet; and Woburn, the gold-keeper, was
unable to leave his store. Having a very large quantity of the precious
metal under his charge, he stuck to his post, feeling that the
responsibility was too great to trifle with. With these three exceptions
the whole of the Gulch, with clean red shirts, and such other additions
to their toilet as the occasion demanded, sauntered in a straggling line
along the clayey pathway which led up to the saloon.
The interior of the building had been provided with rough benches; and
the parson, with his quiet, good-humoured smile, was standing at the
door to welcome them. "Good morning, boys," he cried cheerily, as each
group came lounging up. "Pass in! pass in. You'll find this is as good a
morning's work as any you've done. Leave your pistols in this barrel
outside the door as you pass; you can pick them out as you come out
again; but it isn't the thing to carry weapons into the house of peace."
His request was good-humouredly complied with, and before the last of
the congregation filed in there was a strange assortment of knives and
firearms in this depository. When all had assembled the doors were shut
and the service began--the first and the last which was ever performed
at Jackman's Gulch.
The weather was sultry and the room close, yet the miners listened with
exemplary patience. There was a sense of novelty in the situation which
had its attractions. To some it was entirely new, others were wafted
back by it to another land and other days. Beyond a disposition which
was exhibited by the uninitiated to applaud at the end of certain
prayers, by way of showing that they sympathised with the sentiments
expressed, no audience could have behaved better. There was a murmur of
interest, however, when Elias B. Hopkins, looking down on the
congregation from his rostrum of casks, began his address.
He had attired himself with care in honour of the occasion. He wore a
velveteen tunic, girt round the waist with a sash of china silk, a pair
of moleskin trousers, and held his cabbage-tree hat in his left hand. He
began speaking in a low tone, and it was noticed at the time that he
frequently glanced through the small aperture which served for a window,
which was placed above the heads of those who sat beneath him.
"I've put you straight now," he said, in the course of his address;
"I've got you in the right rut, if you will but stick in it." Here he
looked very hard out of the window for some seconds. "You've learned
soberness and industry, and with those things you can always make up any
loss you may sustain. I guess there isn't one of ye that won't remember
my visit to this camp." He paused for a moment, and three revolver shots
rang out upon the quiet summer air. "Keep your seats, damn ye!" roared
our preacher, as his audience rose in excitement. "If a man of ye
moves, down he goes! The door's locked on the outside, so ye can't get
out anyhow. Your seats, ye canting, chuckle-headed fools! Down with ye,
ye dogs, or I'll fire among ye!"
Astonishment and fear brought us back into our seats, and we sat staring
blankly at our pastor and each other. Elias B. Hopkins, whose whole face
and even figure appeared to have undergone an extraordinary alteration,
looked fiercely down on us from his commanding position with a
contemptuous smile on his stern face.
"I have your lives in my hands," he remarked; and we noticed as he spoke
that he held a heavy revolver in his hand, and that the butt of another
one protruded from his sash. "I am armed and you are not. If one of you
moves or speaks, he is a dead man. If not, I shall not harm you. You must
wait here for an hour. Why, you _fools_" (this with a hiss of contempt
which rang in our ears for many a long day), "do you know who it is that
has stuck you up? Do you know who it is that has been playing it upon you
for months as a parson and a saint? Conky Jim, the bushranger, ye apes!
And Phillips and Maule were my two right-hand men. They're off into the
hills with your gold---- Ha! would ye?" This to some restive member of
the audience, who quieted down instantly before the fierce eye and the
ready weapon of the bushranger. "In an hour they will be clear of any
pursuit, and I advise you to make the best of it and not to follow, or
you may lose more than your money. My horse is tethered outside this door
behind me. When the time is up I shall pass through it, lock it on the
outside, and be off. Then you may break your way out as best you can. I
have no more to say to you, except that ye are the most cursed set of
asses that ever trod in boot-leather."
We had time to endorse mentally this outspoken opinion during the long
sixty minutes which followed; we were powerless before the resolute
desperado. It is true that if we made a simultaneous rush we might bear
him down at the cost of eight or ten of our number. But how could such a
rush be organised without speaking, and who would attempt it without a
previous agreement that he would be supported? There was nothing for it
but submission. It seemed three hours at the least before the ranger
snapped up his watch, stepped down from the barrel, walked backwards,
still covering us with his weapon, to the door behind him, and then
passed rapidly through it. We heard the creaking of the rusty lock, and
the clatter of his horse's hoofs as he galloped away.
It has been remarked that an oath had for the last few weeks been a rare
thing in the camp. We made up for our temporary abstention during the
next half-hour. Never was heard such symmetrical and heartfelt
blasphemy. When at last we succeeded in getting the door off its hinges
all sight of both rangers and treasure had disappeared, nor have we ever
caught sight of either the one or the other since. Poor Woburn, true to
his trust, lay shot through the head across the threshold of his empty
store. The villains, Maule and Phillips, had descended upon the camp the
instant that we had been enticed into the trap, murdered the keeper,
loaded up a small cart with the booty, and got safe away to some wild
fastness among the mountains, where they were joined by their wily
leader.
Jackman's Gulch recovered from this blow, and is now a flourishing
township. Social reformers are not in request there, however, and
morality is at a discount. It is said that an inquest has been held
lately upon an unoffending stranger who chanced to remark that in so
large a place it would be advisable to have some form of Sunday service.
The memory of their one and only pastor is still green among the
inhabitants, and will be for many a long year to come.
_MY FRIEND THE MURDERER._
"Number 43 is no better, Doctor," said the head-warder in a slightly
reproachful accent, looking in round the corner of my door.
"Confound 43!" I responded from behind the pages of the _Australian
Sketcher_.
"And 61 says his tubes are paining him. Couldn't you do anything for
him?"
"He's a walking drug shop," said I. "He has the whole British
pharmacop[oe]ia inside him. I believe his tubes are as sound as yours
are."
"Then there's 7 and 108, they are chronic," continued the warder,
glancing down a blue slip of paper. "And 28 knocked off work
yesterday--said lifting things gave him a stitch in the side. I want you
to have a look at him, if you don't mind, Doctor. There's 31, too--him
that killed John Adamson in the _Corinthian_ brig--he's been carrying on
awful in the night, shrieking and yelling, he has, and no stopping him
neither."
"All right, I'll have a look at him afterwards," I said, tossing my
paper carelessly aside, and pouring myself out a cup of coffee. "Nothing
else to report, I suppose, warder?"
The official protruded his head a little further into the room. "Beg
pardon, Doctor," he said, in a confidential tone, "but I notice as 82
has a bit of a cold, and it would be a good excuse for you to visit him
and have a chat, maybe."
The cup of coffee was arrested half-way to my lips as I stared in
amazement at the man's serious face.
"An excuse?" I said. "An excuse? What the deuce are you talking about,
McPherson? You see me trudging about all day at my practice, when I'm
not looking after the prisoners, and coming back every night as tired as
a dog, and you talk about finding an excuse for doing more work."
"You'd like it, Doctor," said Warder McPherson, insinuating one of his
shoulders into the room. "That man's story's worth listening to if you
could get him to tell it, though he's not what you'd call free in his
speech. Maybe you don't know who 82 is?"
"No, I don't, and I don't care either," I answered, in the conviction
that some local ruffian was about to be foisted upon me as a celebrity.
"He's Maloney," said the warder, "him that turned Queen's evidence after
the murders at Bluemansdyke."
"You don't say so?" I ejaculated, laying down my cup in astonishment. I
had heard of this ghastly series of murders, and read an account of them
in a London magazine long before setting foot in the colony. I
remembered that the atrocities committed had thrown the Burke and Hare
crimes completely into the shade, and that one of the most villainous of
the gang had saved his own skin by betraying his companions. "Are you
sure?" I asked.
"Oh yes, it's him right enough. Just you draw him out a bit, and he'll
astonish you. He's a man to know, is Maloney; that's to say, in
moderation;" and the head grinned, bobbed, and disappeared, leaving me
to finish my breakfast and ruminate over what I had heard.
The surgeonship of an Australian prison is not an enviable position. It
may be endurable in Melbourne or Sydney, but the little town of Perth
has few attractions to recommend it, and those few had been long
exhausted. The climate was detestable, and the society far from
congenial. Sheep and cattle were the staple support of the community;
and their prices, breeding, and diseases the principal topic of
conversation. Now as I, being an outsider, possessed neither the one nor
the other, and was utterly callous to the new "dip" and the "rot" and
other kindred topics, I found myself in a state of mental isolation, and
was ready to hail anything which might relieve the monotony of my
existence. Maloney, the murderer, had at least some distinctiveness and
individuality in his character, and might act as a tonic to a mind sick
of the commonplaces of existence. I determined that I should follow the
warder's advice, and take the excuse for making his acquaintance. When,
therefore, I went upon my usual matutinal round, I turned the lock of
the door which bore the convict's number upon it, and walked into the
cell.
The man was lying in a heap upon his rough bed as I entered, but,
uncoiling his long limbs, he started up and stared at me with an
insolent look of defiance on his face which augured badly for our
interview. He had a pale set face, with sandy hair and a steelly-blue
eye, with something feline in its expression. His frame was tall and
muscular, though there was a curious bend in his shoulders, which almost
amounted to a deformity. An ordinary observer meeting him in the street
might have put him down as a well-developed man, fairly handsome, and of
studious habits--even in the hideous uniform of the rottenest convict
establishment he imparted a certain refinement to his carriage which
marked him out among the inferior ruffians around him.
"I'm not on the sick-list," he said gruffly. There was something in the
hard, rasping voice which dispelled all softer allusions, and made me
realise that I was face to face with the man of the Lena Valley and
Bluemansdyke, the bloodiest bushranger that ever stuck up a farm or cut
the throats of its occupants.
"I know you're not," I answered. "Warder McPherson told me you had a
cold, though, and I thought I'd look in and see you."
"Blast Warder McPherson, and blast you, too!" yelled the convict, in a
paroxysm of rage. "Oh, that's right," he added, in a quieter voice;
"hurry away; report me to the governor, do! Get me another six months
or so--that's your game."
"I'm not going to report you," I said.
"Eight square feet of ground," he went on, disregarding my protest, and
evidently working himself into a fury again. "Eight square feet, and I
can't have that without being talked to and stared at, and--oh, blast
the whole crew of you!" and he raised his two clenched hands above his
head and shook them in passionate invective.
"You've got a curious idea of hospitality," I remarked, determined not
to lose my temper, and saying almost the first thing that came to my
tongue.
To my surprise the words had an extraordinary effect upon him. He seemed
completely staggered at my assuming the proposition for which he had
been so fiercely contending--namely, that the room in which we stood was
his own.
"I beg your pardon," he said; "I didn't mean to be rude. Won't you take
a seat?" and he motioned towards a rough trestle, which formed the
headpiece of his couch.
I sat down rather astonished at the sudden change. I don't know that I
liked Maloney better under his new aspect. The murderer had, it is
true, disappeared for the nonce, but there was something in the smooth
tones and obsequious manner which powerfully suggested the witness of
the Queen, who had stood up and sworn away the lives of his companions
in crime.
"How's your chest?" I asked, putting on my professional air.
"Come, drop it, Doctor, drop it!" he answered, showing a row of white
teeth as he resumed his seat upon the side of the bed. "It wasn't
anxiety after my precious health that brought you along here; that story
won't wash at all. You came to have a look at Wolf Tone Maloney, forger,
murderer, Sydney-slider, ranger, and Government peach. That's about my
figure, ain't it? There it is, plain and straight; there's nothing mean
about me."
He paused as if he expected me to say something; but as I remained
silent, he repeated once or twice, "There's nothing mean about me."
"And why shouldn't I?" he suddenly yelled, his eyes gleaming and his
whole satanic nature reasserting itself. "We were bound to swing, one
and all, and they were none the worse if I saved myself by turning
against them. Every man for himself, say I, and the devil take the
luckiest. You haven't a plug of tobacco, Doctor, have you?"
He tore at the piece of "Barrett's" which I handed him as ravenously as
a wild beast. It seemed to have the effect of soothing his nerves, for
he settled himself down in the bed, and reassumed his former deprecating
manner.
"You wouldn't like it yourself, you know, Doctor," he said; "it's enough
to make any man a little queer in his temper. I'm in for six months this
time for assault, and very sorry I shall be to go out again, I can tell
you. My mind's at ease in here; but when I'm outside, what with the
Government, and what with Tattooed Tom of Hawkesbury, there's no chance
of a quiet life."
"Who is he?" I asked.
"He's the brother of John Grimthorpe; the same that was condemned on my
evidence, and an infernal scamp he was too! Spawn of the devil, both of
them! This tattooed one is a murderous ruffian, and he swore to have my
blood after that trial. It's seven year ago, and he's following me yet;
I know he is, though he lies low and keeps dark. He came up to me in
Ballarat in '75; you can see on the back of my hand here where the
bullet clipped me. He tried again in '76, at Port Philip, but I got the
drop on him and wounded him badly. He knifed me in '79 though, in a bar
at Adelaide, and that made our account about level. He's loafing round
again now, and he'll let daylight into me--unless--unless by some
extraordinary chance some one does as much for him." And Maloney gave a
very ugly smile.
"I don't complain of _him_ so much," he continued. "Looking at it in his
way, no doubt it is a sort of family matter that can hardly be
neglected. It's the Government that fetches me. When I think of what
I've done for this country, and then of what this country has done for
me, it makes me fairly wild--clean drives me off my head. There's no
gratitude nor common decency left, Doctor!"
He brooded over his wrongs for a few minutes, and then proceeded to lay
them before me in detail.
"Here's nine men," he said, "they've been murdering and killing for a
matter of three years, and maybe a life a week wouldn't more than
average the work that they've done. The Government catches them and the
Government tries them, but they can't convict; and why?--because the
witnesses have all had their throats cut, and the whole job's been very
neatly done. What happens then? Up comes a citizen called Wolf Tone
Maloney; he says, 'The country needs me, and here I am.' And with that
he gives his evidence, convicts the lot, and enables the beaks to hang
them. That's what I did. There's nothing mean about me! And now what
does the country do in return? Dogs me, sir, spies on me, watches me
night and day, turns against the very man that worked so hard for it.
There's something mean about that, anyway. I didn't expect them to
knight me, nor to make me Colonial Secretary; but, damn it, I did expect
that they would let me alone!"
"Well," I remonstrated, "if you choose to break laws and assault people,
you can't expect it to be looked over on account of former services."
"I don't refer to my present imprisonment, sir," said Maloney, with
dignity. "It's the life I've been leading since that cursed trial that
takes the soul out of me. Just you sit there on that trestle, and I'll
tell you all about it; and then look me in the face and tell me that
I've been treated fair by the police."
I shall endeavour to transcribe the experiences of the convict in his
own words, as far as I can remember them, preserving his curious
perversions of right and wrong. I can answer for the truth of his facts,
whatever may be said for his deductions from them. Months afterwards,
Inspector H. W. Hann, formerly governor of the gaol at Dunedin, showed
me entries in his ledger which corroborated every statement. Maloney
reeled the story off in a dull, monotonous voice, with his head sunk
upon his breast and his hands between his knees. The glitter of his
serpent-like eyes was the only sign of the emotions which were stirred
up by the recollection of the events which he narrated.
* * * * *
You've read of Bluemansdyke (he began, with some pride in his tone). We
made it hot while it lasted; but they ran us to earth at last, and a
trap called Braxton, with a damned Yankee, took the lot of us. That was
in New Zealand, of course, and they took us down to Dunedin, and there
they were convicted and hanged. One and all they put up their hands in
the dock, and cursed me till your blood would have run cold to hear
them, which was scurvy treatment, seeing that we had all been pals
together; but they were a blackguard lot, and thought only of
themselves. I think it is as well that they were hung.
They took me back to Dunedin gaol, and clapped me into the old cell. The
only difference they made was, that I had no work to do, and was well
fed. I stood this for a week or two, until one day the governor was
making his round, and I put the matter to him.
"How's this?" I said. "My conditions were a free pardon, and you're
keeping me here against the law."
He gave a sort of a smile. "Should you like very much to go out?" he
asked.
"So much," said I, "that, unless you open that door, I'll have an action
against you for illegal detention."
He seemed a bit astonished by my resolution. "You're very anxious to
meet your death," he said.
"What d'ye mean?" I asked.
"Come here, and you'll know what I mean," he answered. And he led me
down the passage to a window that overlooked the door of the prison.
"Look at that!" said he.
I looked out, and there were a dozen or so rough-looking fellows
standing outside in the street, some of them smoking, some playing cards
on the pavement. When they saw me they gave a yell, and crowded round
the door, shaking their fists and hooting.
"They wait for you, watch and watch about," said the governor. "They're
the executive of the vigilance committee. However, since you are
determined to go, I can't stop you."
"D'ye call this a civilised land," I cried, "and let a man be murdered
in cold blood in open daylight?"
When I said this the governor and the warder and every fool in the place
grinned, as if a man's life was a rare good joke.
"You've got the law on your side," says the governor; "so we won't
detain you any longer. Show him out, warder."
He'd have done it too, the black-hearted villain, if I hadn't begged and
prayed and offered to pay for my board and lodging, which is more than
any prisoner ever did before me. He let me stay on those conditions; and
for three months I was caged up there with every larrikin in the
township clamouring at the other side of the wall. That was pretty
treatment for a man that had served his country!
At last, one morning, up came the governor again.
"Well, Maloney," he said, "how long are you going to honour us with your
society?"
I could have put a knife into his cursed body, and would, too, if we had
been alone in the bush; but I had to smile, and smooth him and flatter,
for I feared that he might have me sent out.
"You're an infernal rascal," he said; those were his very words to a man
that had helped him all he knew how. "I don't want any rough justice
here, though; and I think I see my way to getting you out of Dunedin."
"I'll never forget you, governor," said I; and, by God, I never will.
"I don't want your thanks nor your gratitude," he answered; "it's not
for your sake that I do it, but simply to keep order in the town.
There's a steamer starts from the West Quay to Melbourne to-morrow, and
we'll get you aboard it. She is advertised at five in the morning, so
have yourself in readiness."
I packed up the few things I had, and was smuggled out by a back door
just before daybreak. I hurried down, took my ticket, under the name of
Isaac Smith, and got safely aboard the Melbourne boat. I remember
hearing her screw grinding into the water as the warps were cast loose,
and looking back at the lights of Dunedin, as I leaned upon the
bulwarks, with the pleasant thought that I was leaving them behind me
for ever. It seemed to me that a new world was before me, and that all
my troubles had been cast off. I went down below and had some coffee,
and came up again feeling better than I had done since the morning that
I woke to find that cursed Irishman that took me standing over me with a
six-shooter.
Day had dawned by that time, and we were steaming along by the coast,
well out of sight of Dunedin. I loafed about for a couple of hours, and
when the sun got well up some of the other passengers came on deck and
joined me. One of them, a little perky sort of fellow, took a good long
look at me, and then came over and began talking.
"Mining, I suppose?" says he.
"Yes," I says.
"Made your pile?" he asks.
"Pretty fair," says I.
"I was at it myself," he says; "I worked at the Nelson fields for three
months, and spent all I made in buying a salted claim which busted up
the second day. I went at it again, though, and struck it rich; but when
the gold waggon was going down to the settlements, it was stuck up by
those cursed rangers, and not a red cent left."
"That was a bad job," I says.
"Broke me--ruined me clean. Never mind, I've seen them all hanged for
it; that makes it easier to bear. There's only one left--the villain
that gave the evidence. I'd die happy if I could come across him. There
are two things I have to do if I meet him."
"What's that?" says I carelessly.
"I've got to ask him where the money lies--they never had time to make
away with it, and it's _cachéd_ somewhere in the mountains--and then
I've got to stretch his neck for him, and send his soul down to join the
men that he betrayed."
It seemed to me that I knew something about that _caché_, and I felt
like laughing; but he was watching me, and it struck me that he had a
nasty, vindictive kind of mind.
"I'm going up on the bridge," I said, for he was not a man whose
acquaintance I cared much about making.
He wouldn't hear of my leaving him, though. "We're both miners," he
says, "and we're pals for the voyage. Come down to the bar. I'm not too
poor to shout."