Wanted Dead (2 page)

But that was likely to prove difficult, Riley was thinking some three hours later, as he made his way out of Goulburn in the late afternoon sun.

He was riding a dispirited gelding of uncertain age. His saddle was standard police cavalry saddle. By his left knee hung a police issue carbine in a leather saddle holster. On his right hip was another leather holster containing a police issue pistol. Around his waist was a leather ammunition belt containing bullets, powder, cartridges and caps. From his left hip, supported by a shoulder strap—which combined with the ammunition belt to give him a singularly military appearance—hung in its scabbard a vast and unwieldy cavalry sword.

Behind him ambled the packhorse, laden with camping gear which was innocuous enough in itself but which proved on close inspection to be heavily sprinkled with Government stamps.

A group of small boys followed him to the outskirts of the town, disposed to mirth, but quelled by the fierce glances which Riley turned on them and the way he fingered the hilt of his sword.

It was the sword that distressed Riley most. A gold prospector or some such wanderer might, just conceivably, equip himself with antiquated police gear in the interests of economy. But no one except a trooper would be lunatic enough to take a cavalry sword into the bush.

As he progressed slowly along the dirt road past the last of the houses the rhythmic, penetrating buzzing beat of a million cicadas secreted among the leaves of the trees made Riley feel as though he was riding in a fog of sound.

Moreover it was hot, very hot. Too hot in fact. He
could feel the sweat running down his neck under the collar of his jacket.

“I think we might camp soon,” he said to the gelding. Its head was down and its feet seemed to be dragging already.

Not exactly inspiring company, Riley thought.

He turned to look back along the dusty track and the hilt of his sword dug deeply into his stomach. As he readjusted the weapon he considered hurling it into the scrub, which was now thick by the side of the road. But then when he reported in for his pay at the end of the month he would have to account for it, and God alone knew what value the Government placed on such objects.

A pair of wallabies bolted across the road almost under the gelding's nose. Riley instinctively shortened rein and tightened his knees against the horse's sides to control the shying. But the gelding barely flicked an ear forward and didn't alter its pace.

Well at least he wasn't likely to break his neck on this horse, thought Riley, unless the damn thing went to sleep and fell over.

About a mile out of town he found a clearing with a small stream running through it and decided to make camp.

He hobbled the horses, although he doubted that they were likely to move from where they stood, set up his one man tent and lit a fire.

“I wish those damned cicadas would shut up,” Riley said aloud. And suddenly they did, so that an unnatural quiet settled on the bush.

Riley, startled, listened to the silence for a moment, then shrugged and went about preparing his evening meal.

Tentatively he opened one of the tins supplied as part of his rations and poked a wondering finger into the contents. It seemed to be a mash of some sort of meat and bran. He poured it into a pan and set it across the fire.

There was a chance that he'd be able to supplement his diet with game anyway and with that in mind he might as well try his newly acquired weapons while there was still light enough.

The contents of the pan had begun to bubble and surge ominously and Riley took the pan off the fire and laid it on the grass to cool.

He took the pistol and loaded it with a ball, inserted the powder cartridge and put the cap in its place. He might as well travel with this and the carbine loaded in future, he thought, just in case he did meet a bushranger.

Picking up the tin he threw it about twenty feet away from the fire, in the opposite direction from the horses, then raised the pistol and sighted at it. At that distance the tin disappeared almost entirely behind the massive sight at the muzzle of the pistol and Riley cast about for some less ambitious target.

Deciding on a tree trunk about two feet wide some fifteen feet away, he cocked the pistol, aimed, and squeezed the trigger. The pistol shook under the force of the trigger mechanism being released and there was a sharp click as the hammer struck home, but no explosion.

Riley inserted another cap and tried again. The pistol went off but there was no indication of where the bullet sped. Riley went over and inspected the tree. Its bark seemed innocent of any wound. He
reloaded and tried again, from ten feet, this time again he missed.

Riley looked at the weapon and shook his head. He reloaded, held the pistol no more than two feet from the tree trunk and fired. A great jagged scar appeared on the right side of the trunk.

“Oh well, effective for close quarters no doubt,” said Riley, who was already falling into the bushman's habit of talking to himself.

He loaded the carbine and found he could hit the tree at thirty feet but the bullets seemed to veer to right or the left, or up and down, with no apparent reason and could only be relied upon to land within a foot of the point at which they were aimed.

“Oh, God help any bushrangers you meet, Dermot Riley,” he murmured. “God help them indeed.”

What was possibly more worrying, he reflected, as he picked up his pan and dug a spoon into the tacky mess the Government expected him to eat, any game he encountered would have to come within reach of his sword before it was likely to find its way into his cooking pot.

The cicadas started their ghastly din again, but soon it became dark and they fell silent.

Riley went to sleep in his tent and dreamed of the grey slate roofs of Dublin, wet with rain.

Dawn broke with a clatter of kookaburra calls and Riley crawled out of his tent and swore aggrievedly at the raucous birds perched on the branches, eyeing him sideways. Perhaps one of them might make a better breakfast than the Government rations? But then the chances of his being able to shoot one weren't high, so he let the idea go.

His horses were still in the clearing, more or less where he had left them. They were cropping the grass and neither raised its head as Riley called a greeting.

“Sociable,” he grunted, pulled on his boots and went over to the stream to drink.

He glimpsed his own face reflected in the water and decided that his beard, which he liked to wear very short, was looking a little shaggy. Going back to his tent he rummaged around in his gear until he found the small pair of scissors he carried for the purpose. Using the stream as a mirror, he contrived to reduce his beard to what he hoped was its normal, rather jaunty, appearance.

He thought about breakfast but decided against it. He still had a little money left and preferred to buy a meal at some shanty along the road. He might also be able to buy some bird shot for the carbine. The weapon wasn't designed for it, but he could see no reason why it shouldn't be used to fire shot as well as it fired a bullet. It wouldn't be much use against bushrangers loaded with fine shot, but then it didn't seem that it would be much use against bushrangers anyway.

Good God, he thought, no wonder the mortality rate amongst special constables was so high with this sort of equipment. It was the regulation equipment issued to all the New South Wales troopers of course, but then their mortality rate was high, compared with the bushrangers'.

Nevertheless, Dermot Riley, he told himself as he saddled his horse, you will not become the eighth constable to die in the Goulburn district. If you should be so unfortunate as to be accosted by a
bushranger, you will defeat him by the simple stratagem of running away as fast as you can.

Not that that was likely to be particularly fast, he thought mournfully, as he mounted the gelding and dragged its head up away from the grass.

“Oh, Paddy Malone,” sang Riley, as he rode slowly along the winding road in the crisp dawn air that so soon would become too hot for comfort. “Oh, Paddy Malone, will you ever go home. 'Twas the thief of an agent that caused you to roam . . .”

He was still singing when the horseman rode out of the scrub and pointed a pistol at his head.

“Bail up!”

Well now, how unlucky could a man be, thought Riley. The youth sitting on the horse blocking the road before him could have been no more than seventeen years old. He had lank unkempt hair and yellow watery eyes. One side of his mouth seemed to have an uncontrollable tendency to rise up towards his nose, as though he were constantly in the progress of giving a mighty sniffle. But the pistol in his hand was aimed unwaveringly at Riley's head. It was the same cap and ball type as his own, observed Riley with some comfort, and tried to edge his horse back out of the two feet range at which he believed such weapons to be effective.

“Throw down your money,” said the youth, who spoke in the harsh unlovely tones that Riley had already come to identify as the Australian accent.

Riley sat on his horse looking steadily at the youth, unsure of what to do. He felt that he would probably be able to get away with swinging his horse around and fleeing, taking the very reasonable chance that the one shot in the pistol now pointed at him would miss.
But that would mean abandoning his pack horse, and God alone knew how many months' wages that would cost him. Besides, while he had no moral objection to running away from bushrangers as such, it galled him to think of running from this sallow youth, who, he noticed now, had very bad teeth.

“I said throw down your money or I'll put a bullet through your head,” said the youth.

Of course, thought Riley, he could just give the youth his money, all thirty shillings of it, and go his way. It was hardly likely that the youth would want anything else that Riley possessed. But even that idea seemed intolerably irksome and Riley sighed as he realised that some curious conscience deep within himself was going to make him do something athletic and very possibly dangerous.

Slowly he passed his right hand across his body, grasped the hilt of the cavalry sword and very slowly began to draw it out.

“What the hell do you think you're doing?” said the youth uncertainly: “throw down your money and stop mucking about.”

Wondering intently what it felt like to be shot in the head, Riley continued to draw the sword. His hand was well over his own head before the weapon cleared the scabbard. Still slowly Riley turned the sword up until the point was raised to the sky.

“Now listen, my boy,” he said slowly, his eyes staring gravely into the youth's. “Unless you put down that pistol of yours I'm going to split your head open right down to your neck.”

The youth stared at him incredulously.

“I'll bloody well shoot you,” he said angrily.

“Go on then,” said Riley, very slowly and quietly
so that the youth had to strain to hear him. “But if you miss, or if you don't kill me, I'm going to smash this sword right down through that skull of yours so that your brains spill out all over the ground.

The youth edged his mount back a step.

“Put that thing down or I'll shoot,” he said, but his mouth was loose on one side and the other seemed to have attached itself to the bottom of his nose as though in a sniffle perpetually suspended.

“You throw your money down quick,” he said again, but now he was speaking in the sulky tones of a child whose friends are not playing the game according to the rules.

Riley sat quite still on his horse, the sword held high over his head. His arm was beginning to ache intolerably and although he suspected that this youth did not have the immense determination it needed to kill a man, he knew that panic could well make him pull the trigger—pull it before he had to admit to himself what he was doing.

The two of them sat their horses, staring into each other's faces. Riley was aware of that silence that becomes noticeable only when it is about to end, and suddenly the bush began to reverberate once more with the regular buzz of the cicadas.

How did they all know when to start at the same time wondered Riley unreasonably, then thrust the absurd thought aside as he strove to glare steadily at the youth.

The youth seemed to be trying to think of something to say now.

“I wonder how many times that gun of yours has misfired,” said Riley quietly.

The youth extended the pistol further towards Riley and turned his head slightly to one side.

“You pull that trigger,” said Riley, “and you've got just one chance in ten of not dying suddenly and messily the next moment.”

He saw the youth's throat work convulsively.

“All right now,” said Riley harshly, “I've had enough of this, put that gun down now before I count three or I'm going to cut you in half.”

The youth's lower lip was protruding and Riley wondered that a mouth could be so mobile. Nevertheless he felt an uncontrolled shrinking in his own breast as though the flesh was trying to recoil from the crashing blow of a bullet.

“One,” he said, very quietly.

He saw the youth's eyes waver irresolutely, looking into the scrub on either side as though hoping for help from there. He opened his mouth to speak again, but shut it abruptly and stared helplessly at Riley.

“Two,” said Riley, feeling his arm was about to break. This was the dangerous moment. Unless the youth dropped the pistol now he would have to charge him. But it was all the same anyhow, because he couldn't hold the sword in the air for more than another five seconds.

“Damn you,” spluttered the youth suddenly, and swung his horse around, lowering his pistol.

Gratefully Riley dropped the sword, urged his own horse forward, grabbed the youth by the collar and hauled him clear of his horse, letting him fall heavily to the ground.

Riley slid to the ground himself and took the youth's pistol before he could recover.

The youth sat up and looked sullenly at Riley.