The Ghost Camp
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“I was pretty smart then, wasn’t I, Sergeant? Do you remember fishing me out of the creek, when I slipped off the log?”
“I mind weel, I thocht you were a swimmer, till I saw ye go down, head under; so I was fain to loup into ten feet of snow water and catch a cold that was nigh the deeth o’ me. I misdooted gin ye were worth it a’! What think ye?”
The girl shook her head at him, her dark, grey eyes bright with merriment, as she tripped out of the room, to reappear with the turkey poult before referred to. “She’s a grand lassie!” said the Sergeant, looking after her admiringly, “and as guid as she’s bonnie. The men and women that are reared among these hills are about the finest people the land turns out! The women are aye the best, it’s a pity the lads are not always sae weel guided. If there was a Hieland regiment here to draft some of thae lang-leggit lads into ilka year, it would be the making of the haill countryside.”
“Very likely there will be, some day, but do you think they would stand the discipline?”
“Deevil a doot on’t, they’re easy guided when they have gentlemen to deal with as offishers; as for scouting, and outpost duty, they’re born for it. Fighting’s just meat and drink to them, ance they get fair started.”
“English people don’t think so,” said the tourist. “They’ve always opposed the idea of having a naval reserve here, though everybody that’s lived in the country long enough to know will tell me that Sydney Harbour lads are born sailors, and if there are many of the mountain boys like my friend ‘Little-River-Jack,’ they should make the best light cavalry in the world.”
The Sergeant bent a searching eye on the speaker. “‘Little-River-Jack,’ ay, I ken the callant brawly. Ride, aye, that can he, and he’s a freend, ye say?”
“Well, I came here with him. He showed me the way, an I wouldn’t swear he didn’t save my life, coming over that Razor-back pinch, on the Divide, as he called it.”
“And so ye cam’ on the Divide wi’ him, ou, ay? And ye’re gangin’ awa’ wi’ him to see the country?”
“Yes! I hear he knows every inch of it from the head of the Sturt to the Lower Narran, besides the mountain gold diggings. I’m going to see one of them, with him, when he comes to-morrow. There’s nothing strange about that, is there?”
“I wadna say; he joost buys gold in a sma’ way, and bullocks, for the flesher-folk, aboot the heid o’ the river. There’s talk whiles that he’s ower sib with the O’Hara gang, but I dinna ken o’ my ain knowledge.”
“Not proven, I suppose – the Scottish verdict, eh! Sergeant?”
The dinner was a success. The soup was fair. The fish represented by a Murray cod, about five pound weight, truly excellent. The turkey poult, like most country-bred birds, incomparably plump and tender, was roasted to a turn. The other adjuncts in strict keeping with the pièce de résistance.
The guest declined to join his entertainer in a bottle of Reisling, preferring a glass of whisky and water. Towards the close of the entertainment the landlord was announced, who took neither wine nor whisky, excusing himself on the ground that he had already been compelled “for the good of the house” to drink with more than one customer.
“I shall have to take to a decanter of toast and water, coloured to look like sherry. This ‘What’ll you have, Boss?’ business, is getting too hot for me lately, and the men don’t like to see you afraid to taste your own liquor. But, as long as it’s something, they don’t seem to care what it is. I’ll take a cigar, though, sir, so as to be good company.”
One of the tourist’s extra quality Flor de Habanas being lighted the conversation grew more intimate, and bordering on the confidential. The Sergeant was prevailed upon to mix a tumbler of toddy, the night being cold, and the landlord, whose tongue had been previously loosened, among the choice spirits in the second dining-room, incited the Sergeant to give the company the benefit of his reminiscences.
“It’s cold enough, and a man that came in late,” said he, “could feel the frozen grass as stiff as wire. But the Sergeant’s been out many a night as bad, with nothing but his coat to sleep in, and afraid to make a fire for fear of giving away where his camp was.”
“Ay!” said the Sergeant, and his face settled into one of grim resolve, changing not suddenly, but, as it were, stage after stage.
“I mind one chase I had after an outlawed chiel that began wi’ horse-stealing, and cattle ‘duffing’ (they ca’ it in these parts), and ended in bloodshed maist foul and deleeberate. Ye’ve heard of Sub-Inspector Dayrell?”
“Should think I had,” said the landlord. “It was before I took this house; I was at Beechworth then, but every one heard of the case. He was the officer that ‘shopped’ Ned Lawless, and a young swell from the old country. There was a girl in it too. Eumeralla was where he arrested them, and everybody knew there was something ‘cronk’ about it.”
“The verra mon! He’s gane to his accoont, and Ned’s serving his sentence. I aye misdooted that the evidence against Lance Trevanion (that was his name, he cam’ of kenned folk in Devon,) was ‘cookit,’ and weel cookit too, for his destruction, puir laddie.”
“Then you think he was innocent?”
“As innocent as the lassie that brocht in the denner.”
“What sentence did he get?”
“Five years’ imprisonment – wi’ hard labour. But he didna sairve it. He flitted frae the hulk Success where they sent him after he nigh killed Warder Bracker. He was a dour man and a cruel; he’d made his boast that he’d ‘break’ Trevanion, as he called it, because he couldna get him to knuckle doon to him like ither convicts, puir craters! So he worked him harder and harder – complained o’ him for insolence – got him to the dark cell – once and again insulted him when there was nae ither body to hear – and one day gave him a kick, joost as he’d been a dog in his road.
“That was mair than enough. Clean mad and desperate, Trevanion rushed at him, had him doon, and him wi’ his hands in his throttle, before he could cry on the guard. His eyes were starting out of his head – he was black in the face and senseless, when a warder from outside the cell who heard the scuffle, pulled him off. Anither ten seconds, and Bracker would have been a dead man – as it was, he was that lang coming to, that the doctor gave him up.”
“What sentence did he get? They’d have hanged him long ago?” queried the host.
“He’d have got ‘life,’ or all the same twenty years’ gaol; but Bracker had been had up for cruelty to prisoners in another gaol before, and Mr. Melrose the Comptroller and the Visiting Justice were dead against a’ kinds o’ oppression, so they ordered a thorough inquiry. Some of the prisoners swore they’d seen Bracker knocking Trevanion about. He’d been ‘dark-celled’ for weeks on bread and water. When he came out he could hardly stand up. They’d heard him swear at Trevanion and call him a loafing impostor – and other names. The evidence went clear against him. Mr. McAlpine said Bracker ought to have had a year in gaol himself, and recommended his dismissal. So he left the service, and a good thing too. I’m no sayin’ that some of the convicts o’ the early fifties were not desperate deevils, as ever stretched halter. But they were paying for their ineequities – a high price too, when they’re lockit up night and day, working the whiles with airn chains on their limbs. And they that would make that lot harder and heavier, had hearts like the nether millstane.”
“What became of Trevanion, after all?”
“He was sent to the hulk Success. No great relief, ane would think. But it was better than stone walls. He had the sea and the sky around him day and night. It made a new man of him, they say. And before the year was oot (he had plenty money, ye see), he dropped into a boat through the port hole, one dark night, just before the awfullest storm ye ever saw. Horses were waitin’ on him next day, and ye’ll no hinder him frae winning to the New Rush at Tin Pot Flat Omeo, where he worked as a miner and prospector, for twa year and mair, under the name of ‘Ballarat Harry.’”
“Could not the police find him?” queried the tourist. “They were said to be awfully smart in the goldfields days.”
“Yes!” said the old Sergeant solemnly, “they did find him, but they could do naething till him.”
“You don’t say so! Well, this is a strange country. He was identified, I suppose?” said the stranger. “Why was that?”
“Because he was deid, puir laddie! We pulled him up from a shaft saxty feet deep, wi’ a bullet through him, and his head split with an axe. It was Kate Lawless that found him – her husband, Larry Trevenna and the murdering spawn o’ hell, Caleb Coke, had slain him for his gold – and it may be for ither reasons.”
“Good God! what a tragedy! Did the scoundrels escape?”
“Coke did by turning King’s evidence. But Trevenna’s wife rode near a hundred miles on end to give Dayrell the office. He ran Trevenna down in Melbourne, just as he had taken his passage to England under a false name. He was found guilty, and hanged.”
“Then Trevenna’s wife worked the case up against her own husband? How was that?”
“Weel, aweel, I’ll no deny the case was what may be tairmed compleecated – sair mixed up. Lance Trevanion had been her sweetheart, and when she jaloused, owing to Dayrell’s wiles, that he had thrown her over, she just gave the weight o’ her evidence against him, on his trial for having a stolen horse in his possession, knowing it to be stolen. Then in rage and desperation, for she repented sair, when she saw what her treachery had brought on him, she married Trevenna, who used her like a dog, they say, and was aye jealous of Lance Trevanion. And her cousin Tessie Lawless, it was her that got him frae the hulk.”
“Oh! another woman!” murmured Blount; “as you say, Sergeant, it is a trifle mixed up. Who was she in love with?”
“Just Lance, and nae ither. She was true as steel, and never ceased working for him night and day till she got a warder in the hulk weel bribit, and persuadit twa gentlemen that lived in Fishermen’s Bend by wild-fowling to tak’ him awa’ in their dinghy and find a guide and twa horses that brought him to Omeo. A wild, uncanny spot it was then, I warrant ye. Then the young lady, his cousin that came frae England to marry him – ”
“What do I hear, Sergeant? Another woman in love with the ill-fated hero; that makes three– in love with the same man at the same time. It sounds incredible. And were they really fond of him?”
“Woman’s a mysterious crea-a-tion, I’ve aye held, since she first walkit in the gairden o’ Eden,” quoth the Sergeant impressively. “Either of the Lawless girls would have died for him – and gloried in it. Kate, that was his ruin, wild and undeesciplined as she was, but for the poison that Dayrell insteeled into her, wad ha’ laid her head on the block to save his. Puir Tessie did die for him, as ye may ca’ it, for she went into Melbourne Hospital when the fever was at its fiercest, and cried that they should give her the warst cases. The puir sick diggers and sailors called her ‘The Angel of the Fever Ward,’ and there she wrought, and wrought, day after day, and night after night, until she catchit it hersel’, and so the end came. The doctors and the ither attendants said she hadna the strength to strive against it.”
“A jewel of a girl!” quoth the Englishman; “why didn’t he marry her?”
“She wouldn’t marry him,” said the Sergeant. “She kenned he was promised to his cousin, a great leddy frae the auld country, who came all the way to Australia to find him, and she said he must keep his troth.”
“Women seem to differ in Australia much as they do elsewhere,” mused the stranger.
“And what for no?” queried the old trooper; “there’s bad and good all over the world – men as weel’s women – and the more you see of this country, the more you’ll find it oot. If they’re born unlike from the start, they’re as different from one another as your cob (as ye ca’ him) frae ‘Little-River-Jack’s’ Keewah that can climb like a goat, or from Middleton’s auld ‘Slavey’ that can gallop twenty miles before breakfast, or draw a buggy sixty miles a day at a pinch. But if we get talking horse, we’ll no quit till cockcraw.”
CHAPTER III
“You will tell us about Dayrell, Sergeant?” said Mr. Blount. “Is it a tale of mystery and fear?”
“It was God’s judgment upon the shedding of innocent blood,” said the Sergeant solemnly; “they’re in their graves, the haill company, the betrayer and the betrayed. The nicht’s turned dark and eerie. To say truth, I wad as lieve lay the facts before ye, in the licht o’ day. It’s a dark walk by the river oaks, and a man may weel fancy he hears whisperings, and voices of the deid in the midnight blast. I’m at your sairvice ony day before ye leave Bunjil, but I’ll be makin’ tracks the noo, wi’ your permeession, sir, and my thanks to ye. Gude nicht!”
The veteran had made up his mind, and wrapped in a horseman’s cloak such as the paternal Government of Victoria still serves out to the Mounted Police Force, he marched forth into the night. The landlord parted from him on the verandah, while Blount walked up and down for an hour, watching a storm-cloud whelming in gathering gloom the dimly outlined range, until the rain fell with tropical volume necessitating a retreat to the parlour, where the logs still sent out a grateful warmth. “The old man must have missed that downpour,” he said. “He was wise to depart in good time.”
Another meeting was arranged. “Little-River-Jack” sent word by a “sure hand,” as was the wording of a missive in pre-postal days, that he would arrive in Bunjil on the next ensuing Saturday, ready for a daylight start on Sunday morning, if that would suit Mr. Blount’s convenience.
Pursuant to his promise, the Sergeant arrived to lunch at the Bunjil Hotel on the day specified. He did not make demand for the groom, but riding into the yard, opened the stable door and put up his ancient steed, slipping the bridle back over his ears, however, but leaving it ready to be replaced at short notice.
“It’s an auld habit o’ mine,” he said to the landlord, who now made his appearance with apologies for the absence of the groom, who was “out, getting a load of wood,” he explained. “We burn a lot here in the winter – it’s just as well we haven’t to pay for it – but it takes old George half his time drawing it in.”
“You’ve got some fresh horses here,” said the Sergeant, his keen eye resting on three well-conditioned nags at one end of the row of stalls; “are ye gaun to have races – the Bunjil Town Plate and Publican’s Purse – and are the lads that own thae flyers come to tak’ pairt? Yon grey’s a steeplechaser, by his looks, and the two bays are good enough for Flemington.”
The landlord fidgeted a little before answering.
“They’re some digging chaps that have a camp at Back Creek. They buy their beef from ‘Little-River-Jack,’ and he takes their gold at a price. They do a bit of trade in brumbie-shooting now and then, the hides sell well and the horse-hair – I’m told. Between that and digging they knock out a fair living.”
“Nae doot,” replied the Sergeant, slowly and oracularly. “If there’s aught to be won by a guid horse and a bould rider, these are the men that’ll no lose it for want of a sweater or twa. What names have they?” And here the old man fixed his eye searchingly on the host.
“Two O’Haras and a Rorke,” answered the host, haltingly. “So they tell me – ‘Irish natives,’ from Gippsland way they call themselves.”
“I wadna doot,” quoth the Sergeant. “Eldest brother Jemmy O’Hara, a fell chiel. But let byganes be byganes. It’s ill raking up misdeeds of fouk that’s maybe deid or repenting, repenting in sa-ack-cloth and ashes. It’ll be one o’clock, joost chappit. I’ll awa ben.”
“Ay!” said the Sergeant, lunch being cleared away, and both men sitting before the replenished fire, which the proximity of Bunjil to the snow line, as well as the frost of the night before, rendered grateful, “it’s e’en a tale of vengeance long delayed, but the price of bluid was paid – ay, and mair than paid, when the hour cam’, and the man. I was stationed at Omeo, I mind weel, years after Larry Trevenna was hangit for the crime, as well he desairved. If one had misdooted the words of Holy Writ, there was the confirmation plain for a’ men to see. ‘Be sure thy sin will find thee out.’ They were half brithers, it was weel kenned, word came frae hame to that effect, and little thought the author of their being that the bairn o’ shame, the offspring of the reckless days of wild, ungoverned youth, was born to slay the heir of his ancient house, in a far land; to die by the hangman’s cord, amid the curses of even that strange crew amang whom his life was spent. But he was fain to ‘dree his weird,’ as in auld Scottish fashion we say; all men must fulfil their appointed destiny. It’s a hard law maybe, and I canna agree with oor Presbyterian elders, that ae man is foredoomed to sin and shame, the tither to wealth and honours, and that neither can escape the lot prepared for him frae the foundation of the warld! But whiles, when ye see the haill draama played oot, and a meestery made clear, the maist careless unbeliever must acknowledge that Heaven’s justice is done even in this warld o’ appairent contradeections. Weel, aweel, I’m gey and loth to come to the tale deed o’ bluid, o’ the fearsome eend. Things had settled doon at Omeo after the events ye ken o’. There was a wheen duffing and horse-stealing to contend wi’! But siccan lifting of kye will there be, amang these mountains and glens, I had a’maist said till the Day of Judgment – but no to be profane, the country was quieter than it had been for years, when word came to heidquarters that Ned Lawless had broken gaol; had been seen makin’ across by Talbingo to the table-land, aboot Long Plain and Lobb’s Hole. There was an ‘auld gun’ (as we ca’ confairmed creeminals) in the lock-up, as the news came; a Monaro native, and haun and glove with a’ the moss-troopers and reivers south of the Snowy River.
“‘D’ye know where Inspector Dayrell is now, Sergeant?’ says he, quite free and pleasant. He was only in for ‘unlawfully using’ – a maitter o’ six months’ gaol at the warst.
“‘Maybe I do, maybe I don’t; what call have ye to be speirin’?’
“‘He’ll never trouble me again, Sergeant, I’m full up of anything like a big touch now; this bit of foolishness don’t count. But if you want to do Dayrell a rale good turn, tell him to clear out to New Zealand, the Islands, San Francisco – anywhere.’
“‘Why should I?’ says I. ‘And him to lose his chance of being made a Superintendent.’
“‘Superintendent be hanged!’ (it was not in Court, ye ken), and he put his heid doon low, and spak’ low and airnest.
“‘Is a step in the service worth a man’s life? You tell him from me, Monaro Joe, that if Ned Lawless isn’t dead or taken within a month, his life’s not worth a bent stirrup iron.’
“‘And the Lawless crowd broken up?’ says I. ‘Man! ye’re gettin’ dotty. Ned’s a dour body, waur after these years’ gaol. I wadna put it past him, but he’s helpless, wantin’ mates. Coke’s a cripple with the rheumatics. Kate’s awa, naebody kens where.’
“‘Ye’re a good offisher, Sergeant,’ says he, ‘but you don’t know everything. You want a year’s duffing near Lobb’s Hole to sharpen you up. But if I lay you on to something, will you get the Beak to let me down easy about this sweating racket, a bloomin’ moke, worth about two notes! I never offered him for sale, the police know that. A rotten screw, or I shouldn’t have been overhauled by that new chum Irish trooper. I was ashamed of myself, I raly was.’
“‘If ye give information of value to the depairtment as regards this dangerous creeminal,’ says I, ‘I’ll no press the case.’
“‘Well – this is God’s truth,’ says he, quite solemn. ‘His sister Kate’s been livin’ at Tin Pot Flat for months, under another name. They say she’s off her head at times, never been right since she lost her child.’
“‘Lost her child!’ says I. ‘Ye don’t say so – the puir crater, and a fine boy he was. How cam’ that?’
“‘Well, the time Kate rode to White Rock and started Dayrell after Larry Trevenna, just as he was goin’ to clear out for the old country, passin’ hisself off for Lance (that was a caper, wasn’t it?), she left her boy with the stockrider’s young wife at Running Creek. The girl (she was a new chum Paddy) was away for a bit, hangin’ out clothes or somethin’; the poor kid got down to the creek and was drowned. Kate was stark starin’ mad for forty-eight hours. Then she took the kid in front of her on the little roan mare, and never spoke till after the Coroner come and orders it to be buried.’
“‘And she at Tin Pot Flat, and me nane the wiser! Any mair of the crowd?’
“‘You remember Dick? – the young brother – he that was left behind when they cleared for Balooka – he’s a man grown, this years and years; well, she lives with him. And they say she goes to the shaft every day that Lance was hauled out from, to kneel down and pray. What for, God only knows. Dick’s quiet, but dangerous; he’s the best rider and tracker from Dargo High Plain to Bourke, and that’s a big word.’
“‘I ken that; I’ll joost ride round, and tak’ a look – he’ll need watchin’, and if he’s joined Ned, and Kate’s makin’ a third, there’ll be de’il’s wark ere lang.’
“That evening the tent was doon, Kate and the younger Lawless chiel gane – and nane could say when, how, or where.
“For a week, and the week after that, the wires were going all day and half the nicht. Every police station on the border of New South Wales and Victoria from Monaro to Murray Downs was noticed to look up their black tracker, and have their best horses ready. As for Dayrell, they couldna warn him that the avengers o’ bluid, as nae doot they held themselves to be, were on his trail. He was richt awa amang the ‘snaw leases,’ (as they ca’d them – a country only habitable by man or beast frae late spring to early autumn;) on the trail o’ a gang o’ horse and cattle thieves that had defied the police of three colonies. They had left a record in Queensland before they crossed the New South Wales border.
“Noted men among them – ane tried for murder! A mate, suspect o’ treachery, was found in a creek wi’ twa bullets in’s heid – there were ither evil deeds to accoont for.
“Ay, they were a dour gang – fightin’ to the death. So Dayrell took five of his best men and volunteered for the capture. ‘He was getting rusty,’ he said, ‘but would break up this gang or they should have his scalp.’ These were the very words he used.
“Omeo diggings were passed on the way up. There was sure to be some one that knew him, wherever he went in any of the colonies.
“A tall man put his head out of a shaft on ‘Tin Pot’ as he rode through the Flat at the head of his troopers, and cursed him with deleeberate maleegnity until they were out of sight. ‘Ride on, you bloody dog!’ he said – grinding his teeth – ‘you won’t reign much longer now that Ned and I can work together again, and we have your tracks. I know every foot of the road you’re bound to travel now – once you’re as far as Merrigal there’s no get away between Snowy Creek and the Jibbo. It was our rotten luck the day we first set eyes on you. We were not such a bad crowd if we’d been let alone. Tessie had half persuaded Ned to drop the cross work after we got shut of the Balooka horses. The day afore he told me he’d two minds to let ’em go on the road. Then he couldn’t have been pulled for more than illegal using, which isn’t felony. But you must come along and spoil everything. Lance was copped, as innocent as a child: Ned gets a stretch – it was his death sentence. I know what it’s turned him into. Kate’s gone mad, what with losin’ the kid – a fine little chap, so he was (I cried when I heard of it)! Larry’s hanged – serve him right.
“‘Lance is dead and buried, poor chap! I don’t know what’ll become of me. And what’s more I don’t care; but I’ll have revenge, blast you! before the year’s out, if I swing for it!’
“He didna ken Dick Lawless again in his digger’s dress, and there were few that he didna remember either, if it was ten years after. So he joost gaed alang blithe and gay. The sun was abune the fog that aye hangs o’er the flat till midday, or maybe disna lift at a’ like a Highland mist. He touched his horse’s rein, and the gey, weel-trained beastie gave a dance like, and shook his heid, till bit and curb chain jingled again.