‘The Last Chance Mine.’
Attempt to carry off the Escort Gold!
Five-and-twenty thousand ounces!
Desperate encounter. Two men killed:
Mr. Banneret and ‘Long Jack.’
Several of the Escort wounded.
Immense excitement on the Field.
Special Evening Edition of
The Clarion.Our Contemporary misinformed:
Mr. Banneret not killed.
[160] ]He and Dick Andrews, the well-known Miner,
dangerously wounded—the latter, while
defending the Escort heroically, shot through
the body. ‘The Gipsy’ captured by the Honourable
Denzil Southwater, a Shareholder, who was unarmed.
Lord Newstead suffering from a broken arm.
Full particulars in our morning issue.
The effect of this and similar announcements may be imagined. Public feeling was stirred to its inmost depths. The police force, as usual, was denounced for incapacity and indolence, and the Government of the day arraigned for want of foresight, unreadiness, and general ignorance of its duties. As to the administration of law and order on this, the richest, the most extensive goldfield in Australia—the only parallel case commensurate with its abnormal inefficiency was that of the British War Office. But the West Australian Cabinet might yet earn the notoriety of having sacrificed a colony if this sort of thing was allowed to go on unchecked—and so on, and so on. The opposition journal of course discounted ‘the habitual exaggeration of a contemporary, the editor of which could not allude to an attempt at the looting of a rich treasure-cargo—an attempt which had signally failed, moreover—without dragging in absurd parallels equally out of date and out of reason. Omniscient as he claimed to be, he had not become acquainted with the fact, now for the first time divulged to their reporter, a gentleman of wide experience in Australian and American mines, that “Dick Andrews,” a working miner, and shareholder in [161] ]the Reward Claim, who shot dead the well-known desperado “Long Jack” and wounded “The Nugget”—formerly of Port Arthur—was no other than the notorious Richard Lawless, the brother of Ned and Kate, concerned in the killing of Inspector Francis Dayrell, in pursuance of a vendetta cherished for years by the Lawless family. They eventually accomplished his death. Lured into an ambush, thus fell one of the most daring and energetic officers of the Police Force of Victoria. They had evaded the warrants issued for their apprehension, disappearing in the “Never-Never” regions of Queensland, chiefly populated, if all tales be true, by refugees of their class and character. From this “land of lost souls” Kate Lawless returned to die by her own hand on the grave of her child at Running Creek on Monaro; while her brother Richard, a marvellous bushman and all-round worker, as are many of his compatriots, has been employed under the very noses of the police as “Dick Andrews,” remarkable only for his steady, hardworking habits and inoffensive general demeanour. Tall, spare, and sinewy, wearing the ordinary beard of the dweller in the Waste, he was in no way distinguishable from the thousands of Australians whom the magnet of the “Golden Belt” has drawn with resistless force to our colony. There is no intention, we hear, of putting the law in force against him; for he will be arraigned before a Higher Court, a more august Judge, than Australia can furnish. His wounds are mortal. His hours are numbered. And before to-morrow’s sun leaves Pilot Mount in [162] ]darkness, the soul of the erring, but not wholly lost homicide, whom men knew as Dick Lawless, will have quitted its earthly tenement for the final audit.’
The editorial dictum was prophetic. Mr. Banneret and Denzil Southwater, watching by the dying man’s couch, listened to his last words while the labouring breath grew faint—then failed for ever. One bullet had pierced his left lung; another had lodged in the spine. Both injuries were mortal. It was a question of hours—of few of them indeed.
‘I stopped “Long Jack,” Commissioner!’ he said, while a slow smile of satisfaction lit up the calm features, ‘afore he got in another pot at you. He’d not have missed twice. I’m goin’ out, and except for the wife and kids I don’t know as it’s much odds; there’s enough to keep them when she gets back to Tumut, where her people live. Land’s easy got there; a bit of corn-flat with a few cows ’ll keep her easy and comfortable. The boy and girl ’ll get schoolin’ till they’re out in the world, and their mother won’t tell ’em too much about me—their poor father, as died in his right place—a-standin’ off them as tried to collar the gold he’d worked hard for. You write it out, Mr. Southwater—all as I’ve said, and just put Richard Lawless his mark at the foot. The Commissioner might witness it—if he’ll be so good—and you too, sir.’
They complied with the sufferer’s request. Great drops of blood welled up from the shattered lung, as between gasps he laboriously formed the [163] ]cross which validated his will, made for the benefit of the woman who had followed him from the green, fertile valley, where the sparkling river comes leaping down from the snow-crowned alp. With her he had been ever mild and patient—a tireless worker when work was to be had—often away for months at a time, but reserved as to his occupation. Brokenly, and with hesitation, he said: ‘Commissioner! I’ll die easier like if you’ll shake hands afore I go. It’s a suspension o’ labour in a manner of speakin’.’ And with a quiet smile on his lips at an old goldfields jest, the soul of ‘Dick Andrews,’ otherwise Richard Lawless, fled away from its earthly tenement, leaving the hand of Arnold Banneret, ex-Commissioner of Barrawong, New South Wales, still enclosed in a dead man’s rigid grasp.
‘Poor Dick! poor chap!’ said Banneret; ‘there goes a man’s life made for better things. I suppose he did save mine—barring accident. That long ruffian wouldn’t have missed twice. With the exception of the vendetta business with Dayrell—and there are two versions of that story—I never heard of his doing anything mean or dishonest—that is “crooked”’—he added reflectively—having regard to the prevailing tone of Monaro morality.
. . . . . . . . .
The fervour of the editors of all the journals, printed within a thousand miles or so, having exhausted itself and the public interest, matters returned to their normal state and condition. The escort waggonette, artistically tooled by Gore [164] ]Chesterfield, cleared out for Perth at sunrise one fine morning, ‘laden’ (as the local mining organ put it) ‘with gold, ammunition, firearms, and decayed gentlefolk.’ On the box-seat, between Mr. Banneret and the charioteer, sat an aristocratic society dame of ducal connections, who, originally voyaging to Fremantle with maternal solicitude, had remained to take a hand in the mining adventure of the period. Having been down the deepest mine of the ‘field,’ and across the desert on a camel as far as the famous ‘Leonora’ and ‘Mount Idalia,’ in both of which ‘shows’ she had invested sensationally, she was not to be daunted by the off-chance of a bullet wound on the present journey. The perils of this passage through the wilderness were, however, minimised by the attendance of a doubled police escort and half a hundred volunteer guards, who (shares in the popular investment of the day, the ‘Rotherwood’ mine, being at a premium and rising fast) resolved to combine the performance of a patriotic duty with the excitement of a ‘jamberoo’ in Perth, and ‘a whiff of the briny’ long looked forward to, and, before this happy conjunction of profit and pleasure, almost despaired of. When it is considered that most of the men who composed this advanced guard were young, or youthful-seeming—that the prospects of the majority were like the climate, sunny in the extreme—that fortune had lately showered favours upon nearly all,—it may be imagined what a joyous cavalcade, dashing at reckless speed through plain and thicket—waking the long-silent, solitary champaign with [165] ]song and shout—the ‘Last Chance’ escort must have appeared to the ordinary wayfarer.
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.
The treasure was duly deposited in the banks of the period; certain favourites of fortune, among them the lady of the box-seat, took passage by the outgoing mail-steamer. Lord Newstead was bound for ‘England, home, and beauty,’ whence his return was problematical; Arnold Banneret for Sydney; while Messrs. Chesterfield and Southwater would return to the vicinity of Pilot Mount, not having as yet acquired the ‘pile’ which was to crown the pyramid of a life’s endeavour. Arnold Banneret made a final adieu to the ‘Reward Claim,’ having by wire received a declaration from his wife that, ‘no matter how many ounces to the ton the “Last Chance” produced, never again would she consent to his putting foot on that goldfield; even if his presence was indispensable to prevent Pilot Mount from being turned into a volcano in full working order, her resolve remained unalterable. What she had suffered when she heard the news (false as it turned out to be) of his death, could never be endured twice. So now, he knew.’ When Mrs. Banneret concluded an argument with these words the ‘incident was closed.’ Her sympathetic partner ‘for better for worse’ resigned himself to a future existence hampered only by the necessity of finding use for a capital of a hundred thousand pounds or two, ‘with all the woes it brings.’