Wanted Dead Read Free

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 abushranger, 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.
    â€œOh, 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.
    â€œBail 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.
    â€œThrow 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.
    â€œI 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.
    â€œWhat the hell do you think you’re doing?”