Wanted Dead (12 page)

Hatton stalked out of the shanty. His men followed him.

Jane Cabel came running in the door, stopped when she saw her brother, made a strange, frightened sound, then ran through into the kitchen.

The crowd began sidling through the door after the bushrangers. Riley heard the hoofbeats of several horses galloping down the road.

The shanty emptied surprisingly quickly, but Riley stayed where he was.

Old man Cabel stared at the body of his son.

The two men who'd been acting as waiters lingered in the doorway for a moment, but then they too disappeared.

There was a bustle of sound at the back of the shanty, then hoofbeats, and the sound of buggy wheels.

Riley could hear a woman sobbing quite close. Probably Jane Cabel in the kitchen.

It struck Riley that John Cabel might not be dead; that he might have suffocated and could yet be revived. He walked across, his footsteps sounding unnaturally loud and looked at the boy's face. He was indisputably dead.

Jane came out of the backroom and stood in the doorway, gazing fearfully at the body.

“Take me round to him,” said the old man. Riley learned then why he had never moved. The girl went behind the bar and the old man put an arm round
her shoulders and levered himself along the bar with his other hand.

He appeared to be paralysed from the waist down. He took his hand off the bar and lurched the last couple of steps, then slid down onto the floor beside his son's body, his legs outstretched stiffly.

“Can I help?” said Riley. The girl looked at him for the first time. Her eyes were wide and staring, but, in a way, dull. Poor little waif, thought Riley, poor little bush waif.

“Go away,” growled the old man.

Riley went out of the shanty, walked across to his horse, mounted, and rode slowly and thoughtfully back to the Collingwood homestead.

“BUT WHAT I CAN'T understand.” Riley said to Collingwood next day, “is why Hatton went through all that nonsense. Why didn't he just grab the boy and hang him?”

“I think it was probably exactly as you suggested,” said Collingwood, “he wanted to justify himself to the crowd.”

“But why should he worry about the crowd? Nobody dared move.”

“I think you underrate the need of a man like that has to be thought well of. He wanted to kill young Cabel, but he wanted everybody to think he was justified in doing it. You'll find something of the sort was involved in the way he treated the old man. He knew his reputation would suffer if he used violence on a cripple.”

“But surely to God,” said Riley, “he must have
realised what the effect of hanging the boy would have on the crowd no matter how he dressed it up. I guarantee there isn't a man who was in that shanty last night who wouldn't shoot Hatton on sight if he had the chance.”

“Now there I think you're quite wrong,” said Collingwood standing up. “Let's go out on the verandah and let the woman ——” gesturing at the remains of the meal on the table — “clear all this away. There I think you're quite wrong. If you talked to those men or the women for that matter, you'd find there wasn't one who thought that Hatton was in the wrong. They'd say he'd been a bit harsh perhaps, but they'd be on his side.”

“Surely not.” said Riley, squinting against the glare of the sun from the hot paddocks.

“I think so. You haven't been in the Colony long enough to know just what depth of feeling there is against the informer. They're a queer lot these Australians, very queer.”

“Queer perhaps, but no-one's as queer as that,” said Riley.

“But you've got to understand just what the local product is. It's only a few years since this was substantially a penal Colony, remember. I don't know what the figures are, but I'd think that most of the native born Australians now had at least one convict parent.”

“I don't know that that argues so very much,” said Riley.

“I do,” said Collingwood. “You take a population made up of what are virtually the rejects of a nation and I think it's only reasonable that they're likely to develop a rather peculiar attitude to life. All this'll
change of course, now they've stopped transportation, but the whole effect will linger for a while.”

“But damn it all,” said Riley, “Sheer common sense would make these people realise that the bushrangers are a lot of murderous louts.”

“I've never seen much evidence of common sense in the Colony,” said Collingwood. “And besides, it's not all the Australians' fault either. They're stuck out here in the wilds. Most of them are dirt poor. They've no education at all. They've got this general criminal background—serious or otherwise it's still criminal—and the most colourful figures in their lives are the bushrangers and the police. Now you just think for a moment — if you were in their position which would you find preferable? A man like Hatton, or a man like your sub-inspector?”

“That's a nice point,” said Riley, “but you're getting away from the main argument, which was whether or not anybody is going to look on Hatton as anything but a wild animal after hanging that boy.”

“He's hanged people before, you know,” said Collingwood mildly.

“Yes. I was thinking mainly of the people who saw him actually doing it last night.”

“Hmm, I doubt it,” said Collingwood, “I doubt it very much. In fact do you know who is likely to come out of that whole business worst of all?”

“Well, I would have thought Hatton, but obviously you don't think so.”

“No, I think you will.”

“Me?”

“When they get round to thinking about it, if they do, that mob will blame you, because you were the man who got the information from the boy.”

“Oh come!”

“I'm serious, I tell you. They're a very strange lot these Australians.”

“Anyway it hardly matters, since they don't know who I am.”

“No, but I'd stay clean shaven if I were you.”

He'd have to now anyway, reflected Riley. It would take altogether too long to grow a beard, and he was committed to the intolerable labour of shaving virtually every day of his life from now on.

“I take it,” said Collingwood, “that you didn't get far with laying the bait for Hatton.”

“I didn't get anywhere at all,” said Riley. “I don't know. I doubt that Jane Cabel is likely to be on intimate terms with the Hatton gang after this.”

“I wouldn't be sure,” said Collingwood.

“Oh nonsense,” said Riley: “They hanged her brother, man!”

“Yes, I suppose . . .” Collingwood abandoned the train of his thought: “Although you can rely on the fact that there'd always be somebody at that shanty who would pass information back to Hatton.”

“You think I should pursue your plan further then,” said Riley, smiling.

“My dear fellow, that's entirely your business. I hope I haven't been giving the impression that I'm trying to interfere . . .” Collingwood seemed genuinely upset.

Riley, who thought quite decidedly that Collingwood had been trying to interfere, but didn't particularly object, said: “Not at all. I was just interested in your opinion, whether you thought this set up would have changed things or not.”

“No. I don't think so at all. I don't think it makes
any substantial difference—the girl mightn't be your lead any more, but information dropped at the shanty will still find its way to Hatton. I still think the plan's a good one. Don't you?”

Riley thought the whole thing was too simple and ill conceived, but at least it was a plan, and presumably he ought to be doing something about Hatton. Now there was an interesting development, he was beginning to think he
ought
to do something about Hatton. On reflection he decided he would
like
to do something about Hatton. The man was altogether too full of blood and poison. He ought to be pricked. But Collingwood's scheme seemed improbable. Still, Collingwood was a nice fellow.

“Yes I think it's a good one,” said Riley, “I'll drop out there again when things have had time to settle down a bit.” Which gave him a perfectly valid excuse to hang around the homestead for another couple of weeks, practising his shooting, chatting to Collingwood, who was proving an increasingly engaging companion, and drinking Irish whisky.

It was in fact three weeks before Riley rode back to the Lightning Fork shanty. This time he rode with the comforting knowledge that he was richer than he had been at any time since he arrived in Sydney. The week before he'd strapped on his sword and his Government issue pistol, and ridden into Goulburn on his police hack—which even showed some signs of briskness after a month on the Collingwood pastures—to make his monthly report.

He'd presented himself at the sub-inspector's office, learned with considerable relief that the sub-inspector was in Sydney, and handed in a written report of his
supposed activities for the month. He took a little time to identify his shaven self, but finally the sergeant accepted the fact that he was Dermot Riley.

“What's all this?” asked the Sergeant—the same one who had once acted as prisoner's escort for Riley—fingering the half dozen sheets of paper carefully covered with precise handwriting. The report consisted of an account of Riley's treks into the bush country, his hunt for plants, his method of quartering the countryside to increase the efficiency of his operation, and his cautious questioning of the natives for possible information. The report glided skilfully round the fact that there had been no definite results from his efforts as yet, but ended with the suggestion that something, probably something quite big, could probably be expected reasonably soon.

Riley outlined this briefly for the sergeant.

The sergeant pondered a while and glanced through the report.

“What you mean is you made no contact, eh?” he said at last.

“Well, er . . . yes. More or less.”

“Then that's all right,” said the Sergeant amiably, initialling the report and stuffing it in a drawer. “Don't know why you didn't just say that. No-one reads these bloody things anyway.”

“How long will the sub-inspector be away, Sergeant?” said Riley.

“Don't know,” said the sergeant morosely. “Hope he stays away for good. He might too. They called him down to Sydney to give him hell over Jimmy Hatton. You heard about Jimmy's latest, I suppose?”

“Er, no I don't think so.” Riley had not included the incident at the shanty in his report because he
hadn't wanted to be involved in the inquest. He had had no doubt that the sheer number of witnesses would have ensured that the investigating troopers would have received a factual account.

“Well you heard how he got young Johnny Cabel out at his old man's shanty?”

“Yes. I did hear something about that.”

“That caused a bit of a stir. Not that anyone worried about young Johnny, but everyone's getting upset about this hanging business. Then on top of that Hatton held up the bank at Eurobin, shot the bank-manager through the leg, then went across the road to the police station, chased all the troopers away and set fire to the place—four prisoners inside too. Not that that mattered, they were only Chinese.”

“He didn't hang anybody else?”

“No. Not this time. But he got away with something like four thousand pounds worth of gold from the bank, and that's upset 'em pretty badly in Sydney. That's why they called old Mad Mick down there. They want to know how Hatton held up a bank when there was a police station across the road and why the troopers ran away. I could bloody well tell 'em if it comes to that.”

“Mm?” said Riley encouragingly.

“For exactly the same reason I'd run away if I'm sitting up with a bloody old carbine and half a dozen coves ride into town bloody well weighted down with breech loading rifles and these new American revolvers that'll kill a man at three hundred feet.”

“Yes. I see your point,” said Riley sympathetically: “And what happened to the Chinese?”

“The Chinese? Oh they fried,” said the sergeant perfunctorily.

Riley collected the eight pounds that was left after the deductions from his pay and bade farewell to the barracks for another month.

And it was very nice to have eight pounds in your pockets, he reflected, as he rode through the dusk towards the Lightning Fork shanty. Eight pounds five as a matter of fact, because he hadn't spent all the two pounds he'd drawn the previous month.

Collingwood had told him there would probably be another dance on at the shanty. There usually was one every Saturday night during the summer. Riley had suggested that perhaps the dances might have been postponed for a time because of John Cabel's death, but Collingwood had not thought it likely. That they had not been postponed became evident when Riley was within half a mile of the place. The penetrating sounds of the fiddles carried far through the still evening air, and soon Riley could hear again the rhythmic crash of boots, and, a little later, the laughter and the voices.

At the shanty itself the scene was exactly as it had been on the evening three weeks before and Riley marvelled that death so crude and violent could have left so little mark. Most of these people must have been here the other night, he thought, and yet there didn't seem to be any restraint about their gaiety tonight. He would have thought witnessing something like the hanging would have kept most normal people away from the shanty for a year, or for good. But perhaps these were not normal people. Collingwood didn't think they were.

He studied their faces in the flickering lights of the lanterns and fires. Strange idea. Fires at this time of the year. Although probably their purpose was to
keep the mosquitoes and moths away as much as anything else.

Not that it worked, he observed, slapping at something that was fluttering around his neck. The faces, he thought, taking up his theme again as he threaded his way through the drinkers in the yard making for the shanty door, were just faces. Highly coloured by the sun, and now, strangely lit by the yellow lights, perhaps, considered closely, they seemed somehow harsh and withdrawn. But then if you took any face, burned it under this sun, lit it with fire light, and then considered it closely, it might well look harsh and withdrawn. They were just faces. If he hadn't known that most of these men were sons of convicts … if he hadn't known that most of them had watched a hanging here three weeks before, he would have probably thought they were ordinary men. But then he did know.