only be in the way. I can’t thank you enough for letting me have this
chance. If they wipe me out, Bill, you’ll not lose sight of them, I
know; and you’ll say I died like a man. I’ve got no friends and no
message, and nothing in the world but this pack of cards. Keep them,
Bill; they were a fine pack in ’51. If you see a smoke on the hill in
the morning you’ll know all’s well, and you’ll bring up the horses
at once. If you don’t, you’ll ride to Fallen Pine, where we were to
meet--ride day and night, Bill--tell Inspector Burton that you know
where the rangers are, that Private Braxton is dead, and that he said
he was to bring up his men, else he’d come back from the grave and lead
them up himself. Do that, Bill. Good-by.”
A great quiet rested over the heart of that desolate woodland. The
croak of a frog, the gurgle of a little streamlet half hidden in the
long grass--no other sound. Then a wakeful jay gave a shrill chatter,
another joined, and another; a bluefinch screamed; a wombat rushed
past to gain its burrow. Something had disturbed them; yet all was
apparently as peaceful as before. Had you been by the jay’s nest,
however, and peered downward, you would have seen something gliding
like a serpent through the brushwood, and caught a glimpse, perhaps,
of a pale, resolute face, and the glint of a pocket-compass pointing
north-by-east.
It was a long and weary night for Trooper Braxton. Any moment he might
come on an outpost of the rangers, so every step had to be taken slowly
and with care. But he was an experienced woodman, and hardly a twig
snapped as he crawled along. A morass barred his progress, and he
was compelled to make a long detour. Then he found himself in thick
brushwood, and once more had to go out of his way. It was very dark
here in the depth of the forest. There was a heavy smell, and a dense
steam laden with miasma rose from the ground. In the dim light he saw
strange creeping things around him. A bushmaster writhed across the
path in front of him, a cold dank lizard crawled over his hand as he
crouched down; but the trooper thought only of the human reptiles in
front, and made steadily for his goal. Once he seemed to be pursued
by some animal; he heard a creaking behind him, but it ceased when he
stopped and listened, so he continued his way.
It was when he reached the base of the hill which he had seen from
the distance that the real difficulty of his undertaking began. It
was almost conical in shape, and very steep. The sides were covered
with loose stones and an occasional large bowlder. One false step here
would send a shower of these tell-tale fragments clattering down the
hill. The trooper stripped off his high leather boots and turned up his
trousers; then he began cautiously to climb, cowering down behind every
bowlder.
There was a little patch of light far away on the horizon, a very
little gray patch, but it caused the figure of a man who was moving
upon the crest of the hill to loom out dim and large. He was a sentry
apparently, for he carried a gun under his arm. The top of the hill was
formed by a little plateau about a hundred yards in circumference.
Along the edge of this the man was pacing, occasionally stopping to
peer down into the great dusky sea beneath him. From this raised edge
the plateau curved down from every side, so as to form a crater-like
depression. In the centre of this hollow stood a large white tent.
Several horses were picketed around it, and the ground was littered
with bundles of dried grass and harness. You could see these details
now from the edge of the plateau, for the gray patch in the east
had become white, and was getting longer and wider. You could see
the sentry’s face, too, as he paced round and round. A handsome,
weak-minded face, with more of the fool than the devil impressed on it.
He seemed cheerful, for the birds were beginning to sing, and their
thousand voices rose from the bush below. He forgot the forged note, I
think, and the dreary voyage, and the wild escape, and the dark gully
away beyond the Tápu range; for his eye glistened, and he hummed a
quaint little Yorkshire country air. He was back again in the West
Riding village, and the rough bowlder in front shaped itself into the
hill behind which Nelly lived before he broke her heart, and he saw
the ivied church that crowned it. He would have seen something else
had he looked again--something which was not in his picture: a white
passionless face which glared at him over the bowlder, as he turned
upon his heel, still singing, and unconscious that the bloodhounds of
justice were close at his heels.
The trooper’s time for action had come. He had reached the last
bowlder; nothing lay between the plateau and himself but a few loose
stones. He could hear the song of the sentry dying away in the
distance; he drew his regulation sword, and, with his Adams in his
left, he rose and sprang like a tiger over the ridge and down into the
hollow.
The sentry was startled from his dream of the past by a clatter and a
rattling of stones. He sprang round and cocked his gun. No wonder that
he gasped, and that a change passed over his bronzed face. A painter
would need a dash of ultramarine in his flesh-tints to represent it
now. No wonder, I say; for that dark, active figure with the bare feet
and the brass buttons meant disgrace and the gallows to him. He saw
him spring across to the tent; he saw the gleam of a sword, and heard
a crash as the tent-pole was severed and the canvas came down with a
run upon the heads of the sleepers. And then above oaths and shouts he
heard a mellow Irish voice: “I’ve twelve shots in my hands. I have ye,
every mother’s son. Up with your arms! up, I say, before there is blood
upon my soul. One move, and ye stand before the throne.” Braxton had
stooped and parted the doorway of the fallen tent, and was now standing
over six ruffians who occupied it. They lay as they had wakened, but
with their hands above their heads, for there was no resisting that
quiet voice, backed up by the two black muzzles. They imagined they
were surrounded and hopelessly outmatched. Not one of them dreamed that
the whole attacking force stood before them. It was the sentry who
first began to realize the true state of the case. There was no sound
or sign of any reinforcement. He looked to see that the cap was pressed
well down on the nipple, and crept toward the tent. He was a good shot,
as many a keeper on Braidagarth and the Yorkshire fells could testify.
He raised his gun to his shoulder. Braxton heard the click, but dared
not remove his eye or his weapon from his six prisoners. The sentry
looked along the sights. He knew his life depended upon that shot.
There was more of the devil than the fool in his face now. He paused a
moment to make sure of his aim, and then came a crash and the thud of
a falling body. Braxton was still standing over the prisoners, but the
sentry’s gun was unfired, and he himself was writhing on the ground
with a bullet through his lungs. “Ye see,” said Chicago, as he rose
from behind a rock with his gun still smoking in his hand, “it seemed
a powerful mean thing to leave you, Jack; so I thought as I’d kinder
drop around promiscus, and wade in if needed--which I was, as you can’t
deny. No, ye don’t,” he added, as the sentry stretched out his hand to
grasp his fallen gun; “leave the wepin alone, young man; it ain’t in
your way as it lies there.”
“I’m a dead man!” groaned the ranger.
“Then lie quiet, like a respectable corpse,” said the miner, “an’ don’t
go a-squirmin’ toward yer gun. That’s ornary uneddicated conduct.”
“Come here, Bill,” cried Braxton, “and bring the ropes those horses are
picketed with. Now,” he continued, as the American, having abstracted
the sentry’s gun, appeared with an armful of ropes, “you tie these
fellows up, and I’ll kill any man who moves.”
“A pleasant division of labor--eh, old Blatherskite?” said Chicago,
playfully tapping the one-eyed villain Maloney on the head. “Come on;
the ugliest first!” So saying, he began upon him and fastened him
securely.
One after another the rangers were tied up--all except the pounded
man, who was too helpless to need securing. Then Chicago went down
and brought up the horses, while Braxton remained on guard; and by
mid-day the cavalcade was in full march through the forest _en route_
for Fallen Pine, the rendezvous of the search-party. The wounded man
was tied on to a horse in front, the other rangers followed on foot for
safety, while the trooper and Chicago brought up the rear.
* * * * *
There was a sad assemblage at Fallen Pine. One by one they had dropped
in, tanned with the sun, torn by briers, weakened by the poisonous
miasma of the marshlands, all with the same tale of privation and
failure. Summerville and the inspector had fallen in with blacks above
the upper ford, and had barely escaped with their lives. Troopers Foley
and Anson were well, though somewhat gaunt from privation. Hartley had
lost his horse from the bite of a bushmaster. Murdoch and Murphy had
scoured the bush as far as Rathurst, but without success. All were
dejected and weary. They only waited the arrival of two of their number
to set out on their return to Trafalgar.
It was mid-day, and the sun was beating down with a pitiless glare on
the little clearing. The men were lying about on the shady side of the
trunks, some smoking, some with their hats over their faces and half
asleep. The horses were tethered here and there, looking as listless as
their masters. Only the inspector’s old charger seemed superior to the
weather--a shrewd, _blasé_ old horse, that had seen the world, and was
nearly as deeply versed in woodcraft as his master. As Chicago said,
“Short of climbin’ a tree, there weren’t nothin’ that horse couldn’t
do; an’ it would make a darned good try at that if it was pushed.” Old
“Sawback” seemed ill at ease this afternoon. Twice he had pricked up
his ears, and once he had raised his head as if to neigh, but paused
before committing himself. The inspector looked at him curiously and
put his meerschaum back into its case. Meerschaums were always a
weakness of poor Jim Burton’s. “Demme it, sir!” I have heard him say,
“a gentleman is known by his pipe. When he comes down in the world his
pipe has most vitality.” He put the case inside his uniform and went
over to the horse. The ears were still twitching.
“He hears something,” said the inspector. “By Jove, so do I! Here,
boys, jump up; there’s a body of men coming!” Every man sprang to his
horse’s head. “I hear hoofs, and I hear the tramp of men on foot. They
must be a large party. They’re heading straight for us. Get under
cover, boys, and have your guns loose.” The men wheeled right and left,
and in a very few moments the glade was deserted. Only the brown barrel
of a gun here and there among the long grass and the ferns showed
where they were crouching. “Steady, boys!” said Burton; “if they are
enemies, don’t fire till I give the word. Then one by one aim low, and
let the smoke clear. Rangers, by Jove!” he added, as a horseman broke
into the clearing some way down, with his head hanging down over his
horse’s neck. “More,” he growled, as several men emerged from the bush
at the same point. “By the living powers, they are taken! I see the
ropes. Hurrah!” And next moment Braxton and Chicago were mobbed by nine
shouting, dancing men, who pulled them and tugged at them and slapped
them on the back and dragged them about in such a way that Maloney
whispered, with a scowl:
“If we’d had the grit to do as much, we’d have been free men this day!”
And now our story is nearly done. We have chronicled a fact which, we
think, is worthy of a wider circulation than the colonial drinking-bar
and the sheep-farmer’s fireside; for Trooper Braxton and his capture
of the Bluemansdyke murderers have long been household words among our
brothers in the England of the Southern seas.
We need not detail that joyful ride to Trafalgar, nor the welcome, nor
the attempt at lynching; nor how Maloney, the arch-criminal, turned
Queen’s evidence, and so writhed away from the gallows. All that may
be read in the colonial press more graphically than I can tell it. My
friend Jack Braxton is an officer now, as his father was before him,
and still in the Trafalgar force. Bill I saw last in ’61, when he came
over to London in charge of the bark of the _Wellingtonia_ for the
International Exhibition. He is laying on flesh, I fear, since he took
to sheep-farming, for he was barely brought up by seventeen stone,
and his fighting weight used to be fourteen; but he looks well and
hearty. Maloney was lynched in Placerville--at least, so I heard. I
had a letter last mail from the old inspector; he has left the police,
and has a farm at Rathurst. I think, stout-hearted as he is, he must
give a little bit of a shudder when he rides down to Trafalgar for the
Thursday market, and comes round that sharp turn of the road where the
bowlders lie, and the furze looks so yellow against the red clay.
THE PARSON OF JACKMAN’S GULCH.
He was known in the Gulch as the Reverend Elias B. Hopkins, but it was
generally understood that the title was an honorary one, extorted by
his many eminent qualities, and not borne out by any legal claim which
he could adduce. “The Parson” was another of his _sobriquets_, which
was sufficiently distinctive in a land where the flock was scattered
and the shepherds few. To do him justice, he never pretended to have
received any preliminary training for the ministry or any orthodox
qualification to practise it. “We’re all working in the claim of the
Lord,” he remarked one day, “and it don’t matter a cent whether we’re
hired for the job or whether we waltzes in on our own account”--a
piece of rough imagery which appealed directly to the instincts
of Jackman’s Gulch. It is quite certain that during the first few
months his presence had a marked effect in diminishing the excessive
use both of strong drinks and of stronger adjectives which had been
characteristic of the little mining settlement. Under his tuition, men
began to understand that the resources of their native language were
less limited than they had supposed, and that it was possible to convey
their impressions with accuracy without the aid of a gaudy halo of
profanity.
We were certainly in need of a regenerator at Jackman’s Gulch about
the beginning of ’53. Times were flush then over the whole colony,
but nowhere flusher than there. Our material prosperity had had a bad
effect upon our morals. The camp was a small one, lying rather better
than a hundred and twenty miles to the south of Ballarat, at a spot
where a mountain torrent finds its way down a rugged ravine on its way
to join the Arrowsmith River. History does not relate who the original
Jackman may have been, but at the time I speak of the camp it contained
a hundred or so adults, many of whom were men who had sought an asylum
there after making more civilized mining centres too hot to hold
them. They were a rough, murderous crew, hardly leavened by the few
respectable members of society who were scattered among them.
Communication between Jackman’s Gulch and the outside world was
difficult and uncertain. A portion of the bush between it and Ballarat
was infested by a redoubtable outlaw named Conky Jim, who, with a small
gang as desperate as himself, made travelling a dangerous matter.
It was customary, therefore, at the Gulch, to store up the dust and
nuggets obtained from the mines in a special store, each man’s share
being placed in a separate bag on which his name was marked. A trusty
man, named Woburn, was deputed to watch over this primitive bank. When
the amount deposited became considerable, a wagon was hired, and the
whole treasure was conveyed to Ballarat, guarded by the police and by
a certain number of miners, who took it in turn to perform the office.
Once in Ballarat, it was forwarded on to Melbourne by the regular gold
wagons. By this plan the gold was often kept for months in the Gulch
before being dispatched; but Conky Jim was effectually checkmated, as
the escort party were far too strong for him and his gang. He appeared,
at the time of which I write, to have forsaken his haunts in disgust,
and the road could be traversed by small parties with impunity.
Comparative order used to reign during the daytime at Jackman’s
Gulch, for the majority of the inhabitants were out with crowbar
and pick among the quartz ledges, or washing clay and sand in their
cradles by the banks of the little stream. As the sun sank down,
however, the claims were gradually deserted, and their unkempt owners,
clay-bespattered and shaggy, came lounging into camp, ripe for any
form of mischief. Their first visit was to Woburn’s gold store,
where their clean-up of the day was duly deposited, the amount being
entered in the store-keeper’s book, and each miner retaining enough
to cover his evening’s expenses. After that all restraint was at an
end, and each set to work to get rid of his surplus dust with the
greatest rapidity possible. The focus of dissipation was the rough
bar, formed by a couple of hogsheads spanned by planks, which was
dignified by the name of the “Britannia drinking saloon.” Here Nat
Adams, the burly bar-keeper, dispensed bad whiskey at the rate of two
shillings a noggin, or a guinea a bottle, while his brother Ben acted
as croupier in a rude wooden shanty behind, which had been converted
into a gambling hell and was crowded every night. There had been a
third brother, but an unfortunate misunderstanding with a customer had
shortened his existence. “He was too soft to live long,” his brother
Nathaniel feelingly observed on the occasion of his funeral. “Many’s
the time I’ve said to him, ‘If you’re arguin’ a pint with a stranger,
you should always draw first, then argue, and then shoot, if you judge
that he’s on the shoot.’ Bill was too purlite. He must needs argue
first and draw after, when he might just as well have kivered his man
before talkin’ it over with him.” This amiable weakness of the deceased
Bill was a blow to the firm of Adams, which became so short-handed
that the concern could hardly be worked without the admission of a
partner, which would mean a considerable decrease in the profits.
Nat Adams had had a roadside shanty in the Gulch before the discovery
of gold, and might, therefore, claim to be the oldest inhabitant.
These keepers of shanties were a peculiar race, and, at the cost of a
digression, it may be interesting to explain how they managed to amass
considerable sums of money in a land where travellers were few and far
between. It was the custom of the “bushmen”--_i.e._, bullock drivers,
sheep tenders, and the other white hands who worked on the sheep-runs
up country--to sign articles by which they agreed to serve their master
for one, two, or three years at so much per year and certain daily
rations. Liquor was never included in this agreement, and the men
remained, perforce, total abstainers during the whole time. The money
was paid in a lump sum at the end of the engagement. When that day came
round, Jimmy, the stockman, would come slouching into his master’s
office, cabbage-tree hat in hand.
“Morning, master!” Jimmy would say. “My time’s up. I guess I’ll draw my
cheque and ride down to town.”
“You’ll come back, Jimmy.”
“Yes, I’ll come back. Maybe I’ll be away three weeks, maybe a month. I
want some clothes, master, and my bloomin’ boots are well nigh off my
feet.”
“How much, Jimmy?” asks his master, taking up his pen.
“There’s sixty pound screw,” Jimmy answers, thoughtfully; “and you
mind, master, last March, when the brindled bull broke out o’ the
paddock. Two pound you promised me then. And a pound at the dipping.
And a pound when Millar’s sheep got mixed with ourn.” And so he goes
on, for bushmen can seldom write, but they have memories which nothing
escapes.
His master writes the cheque and hands it across the table. “Don’t get
on the drink, Jimmy,” he says.
“No fear of that, master,” and the stockman slips the cheque into
his leather pouch, and within an hour he is ambling off upon his
long-limbed horse on his hundred-mile journey to town.
Now Jimmy has to pass some six or eight of the above-mentioned roadside
shanties in his day’s ride, and experience has taught him that if he
once breaks his accustomed total abstinence, the unwonted stimulant has
an overpowering effect upon his brain. Jimmy shakes his head warily as
he determines that no earthly consideration will induce him to partake
of any liquor until his business is over. His only chance is to avoid
temptation; so, knowing that there is the first of these houses some
half mile ahead, he plunges into a bypath through the bush which will
lead him out at the other side.
Jimmy is riding resolutely along this narrow path, congratulating
himself upon a danger escaped, when he becomes aware of a sunburned,
black-bearded man who is leaning unconcernedly against a tree beside
the track. This is none other than the shanty-keeper, who, having
observed Jimmy’s manœuvre in the distance, has taken a short cut
through the bush in order to intercept him.
“Morning, Jimmy!” he cries, as the horseman comes up to him.
“Morning, mate; morning!”
“Where are ye off to to-day, then?”
“Off to town,” says Jimmy sturdily.
“No, now--are you, though? You’ll have bully times down there for a
bit. Come round and have a drink at my place--just by way of luck.”
“No,” says Jimmy, “I don’t want a drink.”
“Just a little damp.”
“I tell ye I don’t want one,” says the stockman, angrily.
“Well, ye needn’t be so darned short about it. It’s nothin’ to me
whether you drinks or not. Good mornin’.”
“Good mornin’,” says Jimmy, and has ridden on about twenty yards when
he hears the other calling on him to stop.
“See here, Jimmy!” he says, overtaking him again. “If you’ll do me a
kindness when you’re up in town, I’d be obliged.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a letter, Jim, as I wants posted. It’s an important one too, an’
I wouldn’t trust it with everyone; but I knows you, and if you’ll take
charge on it it’ll be a powerful weight off my mind.”
“Give it here,” Jimmy says, laconically.
“I hain’t got it here. It’s round in my caboose. Come round for it with
me. It ain’t more’n quarter of a mile.”
Jimmy consents reluctantly. When they reach the tumble-down hut the
keeper asks him cheerily to dismount and to come in.
“Give me the letter,” says Jimmy.
“It ain’t altogether wrote yet, but you sit down here for a minute and
it’ll be right,” and so the stockman is beguiled into the shanty.
At last the letter is ready and handed over. “Now, Jimmy,” says the
keeper, “one drink at my expense before you go.”
“Not a taste,” says Jimmy.
“Oh, that’s it, is it?” the other says, in an aggrieved tone. “You’re
too damned proud to drink with a poor cove like me. Here--give us back
that letter. I’m cursed if I’ll accept a favor from a man whose too
almighty big to have a drink with me.”
“Well, well, mate, don’t turn rusty,” says Jim. “Give us one drink an’
I’m off.”
The keeper pours out about half a pannikin of raw rum and hands it
to the bushman. The moment he smells the old familiar smell his
longing for it returns, and he swigs it off at a gulp. His eyes shine
more brightly, and his face becomes flushed. The keeper watches him
narrowly. “You can go now, Jim,” he says.
“Steady, mate, steady,” says the bushman. “I’m as good a man as you. If
you stand a drink, I can stand one too, I suppose.” So the pannikin is
replenished, and Jimmy’s eyes shine brighter still.
“Now, Jimmy, one last drink for the good of the house,” says the
keeper, “and then it’s time you were off.” The stockman has a third
gulp from the pannikin, and with it all his scruples and good
resolutions vanish forever.
“Look here,” he says, somewhat huskily, taking his cheque out of his
pouch. “You take this, mate. Whoever comes along this road, ask ’em
what they’ll have, and tell them it’s my shout. Let me know when the
money’s done.”
So Jimmy abandons the idea of ever getting to town, and for three weeks
or a month he lies about the shanty in a state of extreme drunkenness,
and reduces every wayfarer upon the road to the same condition. At last
one fine morning the keeper comes to him. “The coin’s done, Jimmy,” he
says; “it’s about time you made some more.” So Jimmy has a good wash
to sober him, straps his blanket and his billy to his back, and rides
off through the bush to the sheep-run, where he has another year of
sobriety, terminating in another month of intoxication.