Australian Bushrangers

Northland Age, Volume XVIII, Issue 39, 18 February 1949, Page 4

Australian Bushrangers

(By “PLUGGER” JENKS)

Daniel Morgan

(Continued) CHAPTER THREE It was three weeks after the foregoing that Morgan set about his own pleasure. One evening he rode up to the homestead of a squatter in a small way, and the wife meeting him at th a door saw only a big bearded man who asked for her husband. “I’m sorry,” she replied in answer to the man’s inquiry. “He’s away from home at present.” “Where is he?” gruffly asked the man. “I don’t rightly know. Would you - like to wait for him?” “I’ve made a special trip to kill him.” The woman was terrified by now with the manner and words of this huge, bearded stranger. He brushed her roughly aside, md strode into the house where he commenced to plunder it of all that was valuable and easy to carry. Then he drove the woman into the kitchen, and seizing her, he threw her if to the huge open fire. She was dreadfully burned, .- nd when her husband returned she was a woman demented, and it was years before she fully recovered from her experience. Morgan was well satisfied with his day’s work, and rode off whistling merrily. His cruel streak had been satiated. All this while the troopers had been out in' force after this madman and his party. In September a sergeant and three troopers were hard on his crail, and at nightfall made camp in the bush near Kyamba. But Morgan was fully aware of try's party, and had followed them all that day. So when night came and all was dark, they sat in their flimsy tent, where the candle light silhouetted their forms on the canvas. Morgan was close to the tent, and presently, when the sergeant stood up, Morgan opened fire on the shadow an J shot the sergeant through the throat. As the sergeant fell dead, the other troopers jumped up in amazement, thus offering themselves as excel'ent targets. One of them fell wounded and one was slightly wounded in the forearm. The two remaining, one sound and the slightly wounded man, rushed from the tent and commenced firing in the direction from which they thought the shots had come. Morgan’s coarse laughter was. al' that they heard, and this huge man slipped away through the bush to ' safety, as silently as a spectre. He reached his horse, and was soon able to put many miles between himself and any chance of pursuit. Pursuit, though, was out of the question. The one sound trooper had enough on his hands to keep him busy for a long time. The sergeant was dead, and one trooper was seriously wounded, and the other needed his wound to be dressed at least. The seriously wounded trooper recovered but was forced to retire from the force on a pension. By this time the reward for the capture, dead or alive, of the notorious bushranger, Daniel Morgan, was £IOOO, and this was a food to his iiordinate ego. He strutted wherever he went or ; raided, and was pleased to announce to all his victims that “I’m Dani’l Morgan. There’s a thousand quid offered fer me. Wouldn’t yer like ter earn it ? ” Some small hold-ups kept the gang in funds and provisions, but in March of 1865 they made a full-scale raid on Rand’s station, and whilst there j the rum and spirits were again made 1 to flow freely. Towards the end of the carousal, Rand was made to dance a jig, and I Morgan was so well pleased with the effort that he made the station own- I er, under threat of having buliets j put through his feet, dance until he j collapsed through sheer exhaustion. | Several of the station hands were whipped, and one of the women was stripped, and in her nakedness was j beaten with canes until she feil to | the floor in a dead faint. This terminated the entertainment, and the bushrangers rode off with j all that they wanted in the way of j stores, and their purses were rgain i well filled. By this time Morgan’s name was cursed on all sides, and he could hope for no sympathy from anyone. Given the opportunity there was not a man ! in Australia who would not have shot j him as one would a mad dog. Unlike most of the bushrangers ‘ that had been and were, Morgan had not one friend to Whom he could turn for aid or information. He was a

lone wolf, and his wolfishness had earned him the hatred of the whole nation. The newspapers were by this time soundly berating the police force for its futile efforts in the apprehension of this sadistic monster, and intimated that Morgan was nothing more than a shoot-in-the-back footpad. It likened him unto a swell mobster, and cast aspersions on his courage. This touched the bushranger deeply for he was of the opinion that he was one of the greatest and bravest oushrangers that had ever been, or would ever be. He said so himself. He set out to right these wrongs and prove himself. (to be continued)