old Ned! I never thought to lay you out in a place like this. God’s curse on them that drove you to it; but he’s gone that we have to thank for our ruin; that debt’s paid, anyhow! You were always a soft-hearted chap, and none of us, when we were little, had a hard time with you. Not like some brothers, who’d knock about the poor kiddies as if they were dingo pups.’
“ ‘I’ve nothing to say agen him,’ said the man, ‘he was always good to me, I’d ’a done anything for him. It’s hard to see him here lying dead, and with that infernal prison crop, not even a beard on his face, and what a jolly one he used to have. Here’s where the irons hurt him; I expect he tried to break out afore, and they made him work in these.’
“ ‘My God!’ cried the woman, passionately; ‘don’t talk of it any more. I shall scream out directly, and go more off my head than I am now, and that’s bad enough. To think of him that used to come out of a morning so fresh and jolly, well dressed, and always with a good horse under him, and couldn’t he ride? And now to see him lying here, starved and miserable, like a beggar; it’s enough to break a heart of stone—’
“ ‘It’s too late now, Kate, too late; but we’d better have taken Tessie’s warning and started a square trade, carrying or something, when the digging broke out,’ said the man. ‘We were all strong and full of go. I could do a man’s work, young as I was; the money would have run into our pockets—yes, regular run in—if we’d made a square start and stuck to it. Look at Benson and Warner, see where they are now! They couldn’t read and write neither, no more than us. Then there was that infernal Larry Trevenna. Poor Lance! I was sorry for him. They did us all the harm in the world; Larry with his gambling ways, and Lance setting you up to think you were good enough to marry him, and putting Dayrell’s back up agen the family. Our luck was dead out from start to finish, and now they’re all gone except you and me. I’d better set about the grave.’
“ ‘Where’d ye get the pick and shovel?’
“ ‘Some fossicker left them outside his camp. I saw them when I went to the spring for a drink.’
“ ‘For God’s sake take them back, no use making more enemies than we can help. There’ll be a row if he misses ’em!’
“ ‘All right! I’ll drop them as we pass,’ said her brother, as he drove the pick into the hard, stony soil.
“The woman took the short mining shovel, and with feverish energy cleared the narrow shaft as often as required. An hour’s work showed a cavity of the necessary width and depth, wherein the brother and sister laid the wasted body of the eldest son of the family—once its pride as the best horseman, shearer, reaper, cricketer, stockrider, and all-round athlete of the highland district of New South Wales. The pity of it, when misdirected energies hurry the men along the fiend’s highway, leading to a felon’s doom, a dishonoured grave!
“The pity of it! The man now lowered into the rude sepulchre, amid that ill-omened, blood-stained wild, might, under happier circumstances, and at a later day, have been receiving the plaudits of his countrymen, the thanks of his Sovereign, as the fearless, resourceful scout, whose watchful eye had saved a squadron, or whose stubborn courage had helped to block an advance until the reinforcement came up.
“It was not to be. Sadly and silently, but for the exclamation of ‘Poor Ned! good-bye! God have mercy on your soul!’ from the woman, the brother and sister rode away into the night.
“A rude cross had been fashioned and placed in a cairn of stones piled upon the grave. ‘The moonbeam strook, and deepest night fell down upon the heath’ as the hoofstrokes died away in the distance, deepening the sombre solitude of the spot, which had long worn the appearance of a place accursed of God and man!”
The far back, and by no means busy township of Dumbool was, if not enlivened, aroused from its normal apathy (when a race meeting, or a shearer’s carouse was not in full operation), by the return of a party of mounted police. The leading inhabitants, always well informed in such matters, had received notice of them passing through the district, heading towards the border. The township was not so insignificant or the two hotels so unimportant, as not to provide “Our Own Correspondent” of the Weekly Newsletter. This gentleman, who was Rabbit Inspector, Acting Clerk of the Bench, Coroner, and Honorary Magistrate, held all the minor appointments, not incompatible with the ends of justice, and the dignity of the Post Office, of which he was the present acting head, the Government Official of the branch being away on leave. He performed these various duties fairly well, delegating the Postal work to the leading storekeeper, and the Bench work to a neighbouring squatter, who, coached by the senior constable, was capable of getting through a committal without blundering. But the work of Special Correspondent was the one which he really enjoyed, and on which he chiefly prided himself.
He had often murmured at the poverty of the journalistic resources of his surroundings, which afforded no field for literary ability. Even when Nature seemed kindly disposed, by reason of abnormal conditions, he was restricted in efforts to improve the occasion by the vigorously expressed local censorship of the pastoralists. Did he draw a harrowing picture of the stricken waste, denuded of pasture, and strewn with dead and dying flocks, and herds, every one was “down on him,” as he expressed it, for taking away the character of the district. Did he dilate on the vast prairies waving with luxuriant herbage, after a phenomenal rainfall, he was abused as “inviting every blooming free-selector in the colony to come out and make a chess-board of their runs, directly they had a little grass.” There was no pleasing them. Even the editor of the Weekly Clarion, mindful of influential subscribers, had admonished him to be careful in good seasons, as well as bad.
He was at his wits’ end, between the agricultural Scylla, and the pastoral Charybdis, so to speak. It may be imagined with what gratitude he hailed the “Tragedy of Ghost Camp,” as his headline described it, in which he was likely to offend nobody excepting the Police Department, for whose feelings his public had no great consideration.
Extract from the Weekly Newsletter and Down River Advertiser.
“It is long since the site of this celebrated locality, once notorious for tribal fights, and dark deeds of revenge, not always stopping at cold-blooded murder, if old tales be true, has resounded with the echo of rifle shots, the oaths of the victors, the groans of the dying! Yet such has lately been the case. But a few days since a deed of blood, of long-delayed vengeance, has been enacted, recalling the more lurid incidents of pioneer days.
“We had received information of the passing of Inspector Francis Dayrell, with a party of picked troopers, on a back track, running parallel to our main stock route. They carried a light camp equipment, not halting at stations or townships and apparently desirous to avoid observation. We have in another place expressed our disapproval of this practice, holding that the ends of justice are better served by forwarding information to the local press. Had that been done in the present case, the fatal finale might have been averted.
“Be that as it may, the cortège that was descried approaching our principal street at an early hour this morning, presented a very different appearance from that of the well-accoutred police party that our informant noticed but two days earlier heading for the broken mountainous country at the head of the Wandong Creek. The troopers detailed for this dangerous service were led by that well-known, and, we may say, dreaded police officer, the late Inspector Francis Dayrell, the greatest daredevil, the most determined officer of the Victorian Mounted Police.
“It was quickly noted by a sharp-eyed bushman, in the neighbourhood of Host Parley’s well-kept and commodious hotel, which commands the approach to our township from the north-east, that something was wrong with the body of police now approaching the town at a funeral pace.
“The trooper who rode in front
