THE HUNTED HORSEMAN.

Cromwell Argus, Volume I, Issue 44, 14 September 1870, Page 7

THE HUNTED HORSEMAN.

AN AUSTRALIAN LEGEND. BY RICHARD ROWE. The last cloud of dust above the treetops, telling of a returning flock, had long since melted away; and the sheep, huddled within their hurdles, enjoyed their silly slumbers, broken only by an occasional dream of dingoes, when for a minute' or two there would be confusion in the fold, soon silenced by the reassuring bark of the watchful collies. The cockatoo roosting on the swamp--o<nc by the creek, which an hour ago had looked, big bunches of snowy blossom, could 'no longer be distinguished; the tights in the head-station and the neighboring huts were out; the bush spread black on all sides ; bull-frogs croaked drowsily curlews wailed like Irish keeners, in the flat. I sat, a new-comer, on the verandah of my little weather-board cottage, smoking my pipe by starlight, in company with a bronzed, blue-shirted, blasphemous “old hand,” whose dormitory was my “skillidn.” “ Bloody Bill”—such was the elegantly euphonious soubriquet of my co-tenant, a poacher long ago “sent out” for manslaughter—of course, had all the “ lag’s” supreme contempt for an unconvicted new ■chum ; but, finding that I came from his own county, Yorkshire, he had graciously condescended to overlook the fact that I had never infringed my country’s laws, and favoured me with a sort of supercilious patronage; coming round to myportion of our common dwelling much more frequently than I desired, to tell me how in the course of the day he had “ cheeked the cove,” i.e., insulted his employer, and to enlighten me with his voluminous “ colonial experiencesor, in his own phrase, “ put me up to wrinkles.” On the present occasion, we had been | sitting silent for some time, wrapt in | tobacco-smoke and meditation as we looked j out upon the eerie prospect of faintly star- I lit ebon ; when suddenly the sharp rifle- j like crack-crack of a stockwhip—echoed | and re echoed by the lulls—was heal’d far 1 oft’ upon the right. Another and another j was reverberated through the dim distant j gullies. The sound grew softer, and at length died away in the hushed gloom of; the, horizon. Meantime Bill had crept ; closer to me, and in a braven voice, that • was a strange contrast to his wonted bully - j ing tone, had whispered ; “Do you hear? I He’s out again !” I asked him what ho ■ meant : and, in reply, was told the tale j which, in my own language, I am now ; about to repeat. Years ago the adjoining run, which I will call Debil-Debil, belonged to a man who ought to have been called Moloch— M'Moloch we still term him, since the fiend was Scotch. His cruelties were proverbial even in that cruel time. He would not take the trouble of carting his assigned servants before the Bench,—the least equitable of magistrates would not have entertained his charges if he had,-—but tied them up to the stockyard rails for the most frivolous of offences, —often for no offence, —and flogged them with his own hand until their redder blood laid the red dust. Mere flogging, however, palled on the palate of this epicure in torture. He suspended them by the thumbs from the butcher’s gallows. He tied them neck and heels, and then worried them with his dogs. He smeared their faces with molasses, and exposed them, bound, to the attacks of the mosquitoes, ants, and flies. More than one man thus exposed, hatless, beneath a sun of tropical power, died of the coup dc. soled. Another expired fowling beneath a red-hot branding-iron, which the brute applied in sport, saying that lie must brand all his cattle. A convict woman, whom he kept as housekeeper and mistress, chanced once to displease him with his dinner. Although she was pregnant by him, he scourged her down to a water-hole with a strip of knotted greenhide, fastened a rope beneath her arm-pits, and ducked her until she went mad. She died soon after in the hut iu which he had caged her. I have no doubt that my informant exaggerated in attributing all those enor mities to one monster, but the separate items of the charge could be brought home to many a raster of the old convict times. It is no wonder that the old hands and their descendants cherish so bitter a feeling against the Government ‘ that winked at such atrocities. M'Moloch was possessed of enormous strength ; it was vain for any victim to turn upon him single-handed. He always went armed, to guard himself against conspiracies by day, and at night slept in a heavily bolted room surrrounded by a cordon of sharp-fanged watch-dogs. Three times' his men attempted to tire his house and burn him as be lay, but each time ho

escaped, and the awful vengeance that he took on the would-be-incendiaries made them at length desist from any further effort at retribution. They said that he I had sold himself to the devil ; that he had j a charmed life ; sullenly submitted to his | tyranny. Miles upon miles away from any one likely to call him to account, inflamed all day long in brandy, drunken with despotic power, he turned his “ run" for four years into a little hell. To take to the bush was the men’s sole chance to escape ; but they were so sharply looked after by M ‘Moloch, his overseer (a wretch only less hateful than himself), and one of their Humber who had been excepted from his cruelty in order to have a spy upon their actions, that only one or two succeeded in getting away. The overseer managing all his Sydney business, M‘Moloch never left his property. Shearing time had come, and, for a wonder, one day a black gin 1 with a piccaninny in her ’possum-cloak, j peeped in at the woolshed. Her people i had long shunned the place, for M ‘Moloch ! had shot a lot of them, and poisoned others with strychnine-doctored sheep, laid hero and there about the scrub, to tempt the poor prowlers to eat, a by no means un- | common practice of our G'hristain countrymen, the early Australian settlers. The overseer was in the shed watching I the shearers, when the woman looked in, j and was beginning some coarse chaff with j her, in response to her request for a “ bit j ’baccy," when M‘Moloch galloped up with 1 his dogs. Ho had drunk himself just on ; the verge of the “ horrors,” and was in a j more than ordinarily frightful state of fury. | Blaspheming like a man possessed, he set ; his dogs upon the woman, who lied scream- j iug piteously, hotly pursued by the swift ! kangaroo-hounds, and the more brutal 1 brute on horse-back. Crack-crack went : his stockwhip in unceasing volley. They i tore the babe from her back ; they pulled j her down. Both died a horrid death be- ! neath their squashing jaws. But they did | not perish unavenged. A host of black i figures started from the scrub, and chased the murderer, who rode madly on. A j spear, hurled from the “ womera,” pierced j and brought him to the ground. A bun- i dred waddies beat out his brains. The j shearers scattered in terror when the in- j furiated sav; ges rushed howling towards | the station, which they sacked and burned. • .The overseer, as Bill expressed it, was j “stuck with spears till he looked like a| porkypine." Of the men, some were in- 1 stantly killed ; some perished in the bush; i and but a few survived to tell the tale of 1 blood that has generated in those parts a ! firm belief that MAlolnch’s whip may still be heard re-sounding through the woo ls, I as he dashes on, pursued by genuine de- i mons. The house and huts are now in quite a ■, different part of Debil-Dehil ; the boldest j stockman shuns the old site after ivghtfall. !