Rolf Boldrewood - The Ghost Camp

“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.”

“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.”