The True Story of the KellyGang of Bushrangers Chapter I page 2

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When Lonigan the four men rushed upon M’Intyre, ordering him to keep his hands up, lest he, too, should be armed and show fight. M’Intyre obeyed, and stood still. Edward Kelly searched him for firearms, and, finding that he had none, asked him where he had put his revolver. It was in the tent, he told them; and when one of the murderers had secured it, Ned Kelly, the leader, told M’Intyre that he might drop his hands and sit down upon a log. Then he turned his attention to Lonigan, and saw that he was dead. ‘Dear, dear!’ he said, ‘what a pity that man tried to get away! But you’re all right.’ Thereupon he lit his pipe and looked round to take stock of the camp, questioning M’Intyre as to the arms and ammunition the police party possessed, and the whereabout of his mates. The other men took the billy off the fire and invited their prisoner to smoke and take tea with them, while Ned Kelly told him of what he intended to do. Ned’s brother, Daniel Kelly, producing a pair of police handcuffs which he had obtained in the tent, proposed that M’Intyre should wear them; but, significantly tapping his rifle, Ned remarked, ‘I have something better than handcuffs here.’ He added, for M’Intyre’s benefit, that, should he attempt to escape, he would track him even into Mansfield and shoot him down like a dog.

Meanwhile M’Intyre, with the murdered body of his mate before him as a reminder of what further ill might happen, was anxiously awaiting the return of his mates. Kelly questioned him closely as to their movements. Evidently, to M’Intyre’s surprise, he knew a good deal about the camp and party which was, after all, not surprising, since the sound of the constable’s parrot shooting must have guided Kelly to the spot, allowing him to watch the police, unseen, from the cover of the scrub, and to listen to their conversation before he made his attack. Asked when he expected Scanlon and Kennedy to return, M’Intyre said that he had long been waiting for them and believed they must have got bushed. He begged Kelly not to shoot them. Kennedy, he said, was a married man and the father of a family, whom, surely, he could not murder in cold blood. Kelly said he wanted to murder nobody, and would shoot no man who held up his arms. He knew nothing about Kennedy, but believed Scanlon was a ‘flash ----, that wanted taking down a bit.’ However, he would not shoot if the men surrendered.

Did he intend to shoot him? M’Intyre asked. ‘No’, said Kelly. ‘If I had wanted to shoot you, I could have done so half an hour ago.’

Then, for some time, while his mates appear to have sat apart, or busied themselves in annexing police property, Kelly moralised to M’Intyre on the laziness and discredit of great big strapping fellows like himself and the dead Lonigan leading a loafing life in the police force. They should be ashamed of themselves, he said. He added that at first he had believed M’Intyre to be Constable Flood, against whom he had a grievance, and that if he had been, they would have roasted him on the fire. Constable Fitzpatrick he alleged to be the cause of the present trouble. He declared that there had been no attack made upon him, and that through the constable’s perjury Mrs Kelly, Ned’s mother, was in gaol, and himself and his brother driven into the bush. M’Intyre listened, waiting all the time for the sound of horsemen approaching. He had experienced Kelly’s cool indifference to taking life, and feared for the fate of his comrades. What was to be done with them? He asked. Would Kelly give his word that they should not be killed?

Prefacing his remarks with the suggestion that the police came out to kill him, which M’Intyre denied, saying their intention was only to arrest, Kelly promised mercy, on condition that M’Intyre induced Kennedy and Scanlon to surrender and hold up their hands as they reached the camp. In that case, he said, he would handcuff them all night, take their horses and arms, and allow them to depart in the morning. ‘But you had better be sure you do make them surrender," he added, ‘otherwise I will shoot you.

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