LITERATURE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6438, 7 January 1889, Page 1

LITERATURE.

'•--♦■> .- THUNDERBOLT. , A BTOBT OP THE AUSTRALIAN BUSH, Mv Uniterm tonne.! — xtad bWn£ hciTfefterhoon at the end of that summer I was riding quietly along a track;. It was so Hot that the very flies had ceased from troubling my hone and myself* and the black crows, ; perched in a treanear the oarease of a dead ilrallock, were Bitting with open beaks and drooping wings. I was overtaken by a couple of police troopers, fine, dragoon-like fellows well mounted and armed with heavy revolvers. One Of them, M'Kean by name, A sergeant, and late of the Irish constabItilary, I knew well, a tall, good-looking fellow, the bean ideal of a cavalryman. The other I had never seen before. I was glad of their company) they were bound to our station, so our ways lay together. We pulled up, lit our pipes, had a drink of cool water from the water-bag I carried ■lung to my saddle, Just flavoured with something from my flask, and we jogged along together. Of course we began to talk about the bushrangers. The Bergeant told me they had taken a man who they were tolerably sure had been a mate of Thunderbolt's on the occasion of the bank robbery. He was in possession of stolen horses and had a suspicious number of sovereigns about him; out as to Thunderbolt himself they were at fault. The small free selectors and farmers would not, or dared not, give any information j the bush telegraph was actively at work. Thunderbolt and hia boy were in all probability comfortably hidden somewhere in the ranges, N certain of timely information should the police get upon their track, it told him that three of our best horses had mysteriously disappeared} One of them, the Doctor, winner of certain stockmen's purses and hack races in particular, was well known to him and to most people in the district, and we had little doubt as to who had taken thenu The Doctor was a slashing chestnut, with a great staring white face like Blair Athol t an animal to be recognised a mi],e off amid a thousand others. So we rode on, yarning, mile after mile, under the hot sun, intending, when we got off the stony track on to the plain, where the going was good, to canter on, so as to get home about the setting of the sun. We rod* over a little stony rise and down on to a grassy flat, On which was feeding a little scrubby flock of sheep, belonging to one Fetet White, who kept a bush public house and store a little farther down the xo»d. Here, on the dusty track, we very boob noticed— -the Sergeant and I— the hoof-marks of three horses, one of them ■hod, and quite fresh j they had evidently only just come on to the road, or else we should have noticed them sooner. The Sergeant rode Over to the boy. who was minding the sheep, -but the convict-bred young bub, with the inborn dislike of his race to policemen, was sulky, and said that he Had Been no one. This was a lie, for the horse traoke were on top of the track of the sheep, where they had crossed the road, on their way to water at the creek which ran down the middle of the flat., So -vie pushed On a bit/ thinking to hear at White's a mile ahead of us, who ~ J the travallara might happen to ba. .We rode across a shallow ford, startling a great mob of white cockatoos, which were bathing in the clear water, and as we rose the opposite bank oatne in sight, and a quarter of a mUafrom us, was the little clump of bush buUdinga which made up Peter White's establishment— a long, low veraodahed slab house, its iron roof shining in the western sun, and a few bark and shingled huts, kitchen, store, and etable behind it, all lying snugly at the foot of the forestcovered hills, just where they touched the plain. As we cantered up to the place, everything about it Beemed silent and deserted, save that at the saddle-stand in front of the public-house verandah stood three horses, one carrying a pack-saddle, on to which a fair-haired boy was busy in strapping a swag. And one of the horses was the Doctor! Instantly the Bcene changed. As I Bang oufci "By the Lord Harry, that's my horde!" and the Sergeant stuck his spurs . into his big brown mare, we heard the boy ■««eam or shout some alarm, a tall man rushed out ot the door brandishing something blight in hia band, sprang on the old Dootor, and dashed away, closely followed by the boy, ( and leaving the packhorse tied to the rail. A shout from the sergeant, " Come on, sir, in the Queen's name!" and away we three went after them, thundering down the road, round the corner of the paddock fence, over the steep bank of the creek, into the thick scrub of its far bank, crashing through it, and up the rough side of the hill bejpond. As the two raced over the. bald ridge, we saw the man, against the sky-line, throw out his hand and the boy swerved off to the right ; we never saw him again that day. And then began a furious chase, a race for life and death. Hard riders we all were in those days, hard riders after wild scrub cattle and wilder horses, through thick brush, and Over ranges, by sunlight and by moonlight ; but never euch a ride rode I, as that afternoon after a man. I Beemed to feel the frantio passion with which a horse will gallop until he drops, in pursuit of his fellow horses. We well knew that our horses could not keep up the pace at which we were going ; we knew that the man we were- hunting was familiar with every yard of the wild country we were riding over; we knew that he was flying for his life, and would fight for ib ; but we rode as the huntsman of old may have ridden after the savage beast, Ms prey. Scrambling up hills, clattering down declivities at reckless pace— for we were following the best stockman on that country side — our horses blundering over stones and bogs, my leader still ahead of me; over ridge and down gully we galloped, the Sergeant never losing sight of the bushranger, and i , I keeping well up. if Once we came down a slide, made by tunber-gettere, to send down their logs from the top of the range to the saw-pits in the gully below, our horses fairly sitting on their haunches and blundering down amid a shower of stones. Then the race went on through a thick acacia scrub, the yellow flowers powdering us as, we crushed through, with gold-coloured dust, and up a stony ridge thick with quaint feathertopped "black-boy" trees we struggled with beaten horses, the bushranger three hundred yards ahead, and I could Bee the trooper striving to release his pistol from the hostler to which it seemed entangled. As the two disappeared over the ridge, my blown horse came down, giving me a nasty fall among the stones, and getting away from me in the scramble. But as I picked myself up, I heard that which made me forget my braises — a pistol shot sounded quite close to me, and as I ran over the ridge I saw a sight not easily forgotten. The low hill fell steeply down to a little i chain of water holes a hundred yards below me. In one of these^-acrosa which a tree had fallen— up to bis waist in water, stood Thunderbolt, his hat hanging by the chin strap on the back of hiß neck, watching intently, pistol in hand. Out from a little patch of black wattle «0d» the Sergeant, flinging himself from the saddle, his drawn revolver smoking at the muzyle. He went scrambling down the steep bank, almost on top of the man , !^trT***^i^rTVl'ii«'f a^ t -- " J " " ■ft**' '**'*> <&~~~*^l*

ft shout: "M'Keaht remember your wife and children ! your wife and children S" Bat the sergeant never stopped. Two bright flashes shone through the gathering duak from behind the log. followed by a tremendous splash aa the polioeman jnmpod into . the water hole, firing his pistol as he did so within a yard of the bushranger's breast. Then the latter fell slowly forward acrtos the log without a sound, spreading , out his handß and then lying still, bis pistol slipping into the water. Aa theecho of the shot died away among the hills I rushed down, breathless, meeting M'Kean as he staggered out of the water, exhausted and gasping, "Is he dead? Is he dead?" I helped the Sergeant up the alippery hank, and saw that he was hit* One of Thunderbolt's bullets had passed under his arm, just grazing the rib and cutting his jumper and shirt. Lucky for me that it was so, for had the sergeant fallen I, who was unarmed, must have beaten an ignominious retreat. As soon as we had seen to this we pulled the dead man out of the water and laid him on the bank. The big " government " had caught *""» fair in the middle of the cheat and gone clean through. Mm, and the pistol had been fired so close that the powder had set his shirt on fire. Poor Jim Curtis' dead facefcad no look upon it either of pain or fear, only a slight expression of astonishment ; his beard and hair -were powdered with the yellow dust of the wattle flowers. It was neatly dark as we caught our tired horses. M'Kean said that he was closing with his man, though bis mare was nearly done, when the poor old Doctor stopped and whinnied, as a horse will do sometimes when wofully distressed. Thundetbolt jumped off ana ran for the water-hole, and the Sergeant shot the old horse, as he passed him, to cnt off his ohance of retreat. I was very sorry for the poor old horse; he mtißt have done a severe journey that day, or we should never have caught our man. And we were, both of us, anything but jubilant as we led pur horses alowly back through the light moonlight, soon hearing the " cooee "of a party which, with our policeman, was in search of us. The latter had wisely pulled np early in the chase— neither he nor his horse was fit for such a gallop. We had come four miles as the crow flies, over very rough ground, looking rongher still in the moonlight. With EOme trouble we took a cart into the range and brought the dead man, in the morning, to White's. Alter the necessary inquiry we buried poor Jim, rolled up in a sheet of newly-stripped bark, the bushman's coffin, under a big tree on the bank of the creek. And the boy P Hia history is soon told. Peter White's history of Thunderbolt* s visit was to the effect that the bushraßger had walked quietly into the bar, and informed Peter aB to who he was— -which was superfluous, as Peter knew him well — showing a revolver by Way of credential. After having a drink, Thunderbolt ordered White to pack up a lot of slops and grocery, including, to the publican's mystification, some women's stockings and other female belongings, and had handed out one parcel to the boy, who, pistol m hand, was minding the horses and keeping guard outside. As for the two or three men about the place, they had far too much respect for revolvers, and, perhaps, sympathy for the wieldera of them, to do other than keep carefully out of sight. Then our arrival changed the aspect of affairs, and I have tried to describe what ensued. Not many days after all these things had happened, there came in one night, to the homestead of a New England sheep station, not very far— ac distances are reokoned in the; bush— from the scene of the bushranger's death, an old shepherd, a crabbed and ancient relic of convict days, who was shepherding a nook near the foot of the main range. This old fellow went to the store, where he, after the manner of shepherds, invested in tobacco, boots, soap, pills, and other commodities popular among those who follow, sheep, offering to the astonishment of the jackaroo who was acting storekeeper, to pay for the same in gold. And, when the elder man was questioned by the younger, aato where he had obtained coin bo rarely seen in station stores, the elder replied with the aphorism, that "them as axes no questions geta told no lies." However, a glass of rum exhibited by the master elicited, in conversation, the fact that that morning a young chap bad ridden up to the old man, oat on his run, given him some money and "bounced him" into going into the head station, some fourteen miles away, telling him to be sure and bring out a newspaper and " news about the rangers," the young fellow promising to look after the sheep in the meanwhile. "I axed him why he didn't go hisself," said the old man; but he just ups and chucks me two quid and tells me to mind my own business and look alive." The old man was given a newspaper, and was off before daylight. A note was sent to the nearest Inspector of Police. The Inspector, with the wounded sergeant and a trooper, called at our place on his way to ccc into the matter, and I, pretty sure that we were on the track of the bushranger's boy, consented to accompany him, and took with me two mounted black boys — good trackers. Arriving at the sheep station where the boy had been seen, we had but little difficulty in picking up the traok of a shod horse, which led us right into the heart of the mountains, deep among gnlliea — which bore marks of being filled with Bnow in winter — and over stony ground, where the boys were sometimes at fault. We camped upon the track that night serenaded by wild dogs. Next day the hoys puzzled out the iron-shod tracks elowly, sometimes Over very bad ground, until, in a gully deep among the lulls, we found the track of hobbled horees ; farther on, the horses themselves. At the end of the steep, blind gully was a wall of rock, under which an old stockyard, patched up newly, and probably originally erected by cattle-dealers, close to it a small hut of slabs and bark, with the usual big chimney at the end. The door, made of green hide, was closed ; no smoke came from the chimney ; nor was there any sign of life or sound of living thing to be seen or heard about the silent place, save that, close' to the door, a Baddlelay propped against the slabs, and fresh horse tracks were plentiful about the yard. Cautiously and quietly we rode np, as men who expect to see strange things— they know not what. I easily pushed open the door of the hut, which was fastened slightly with a peg, bush fashion, and I presently saw, lying on the low couch, a figure covered to the chin with a white blanket, a fair-haired corpse, the calm waxen face, the face of her who had been Mra Kaye's pretty hand-maiden, my fellow traveller from Sydney, Jim Curtis' sweetheart or wife. Thunderbolt's boy— poor Mary Lawson. A newspaper lay npon the floor, and on the little bark table near her was a laudanum bottle and a pannikin. We buried her hard by, under a ourcajAtig tree, in the lonely New England mountain ratigeß.