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The True Story of the KellyGang of Bushrangers Chapter I page 3

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Partly satisfied, M’Intyre asked if Kelly would promise that the other men should not shoot them. ‘I won’t shoot,’ said Kelly shortly. ‘The other men may please themselves.’ During this conversation one of the men was hidden in the tent, the other two in the scrub, and Kelly was just signalling them to report his arrangement with M’Intyre, where there came the sound of horses’ hoofs and rustling bushes near by.

‘Hush, lads!’ called Kelly in a low voice. ‘Here they come. Sit down on that log,’ he whispered sternly to M’Intyre, who had risen in his excitement, ‘or I’ll put a hole through you.’

‘For God’s sake don’t shoot the men,’ replied M’Intyre, ‘and I’ll get them to surrender.’ Just as he spoke Kennedy and Scanlon emerged from the scrub into full view in the open ground of the camp. M’Intyre ran forward towards Kennedy, asking him to surrender, as the camp was surrounded. The police looked round bewildered, suspect-ing some practical joke, but almost simultaneously with M’Intyre’s appeal Kelly and his mates called out, ‘Bail up! Throw your hands up!’

Scanlon and Kennedy were both brave men. They sprang from their horses, Kennedy attempting to take cover behind his, as he drew his revolver, and Scanlon making for a tree, trying to unsling his rifle while he ran. Immediately the Kellys began firing, and Scanlon fell with a gun shot under his arm, and blood spurting from his side, before he could reach the tree, or raise the rifle to his shoulder. It is doubtful whether Kennedy heard M’Intyre’s repeated entreaty to surrender. At any rate he disregarded it and showed fight; but he, too, fell wounded before he could fire his revolver, and dropped upon his knees.

All this time the bullets had been whistling past M’Intyre. ‘All right, boys, I surrender. Stop it! Stop it!’ he heard Kennedy call as he fell. But the firing still went on. Kennedy had released the bridle of his horse, which passed close to M’Intrye. Seeing that the case was hopeless, and knowing that if he remained he too would be murdered, quick as thought he leapt on to Kennedy’s horse and gal-loped away through thick scrub.

Dan Kelly was the first to notice his attempted escape. ‘Shoot that -----. Shoot that -----,’ M’Intyre heard him call, and several shots followed, while bullets sang close past his ears, but none of them struck him; and soon the sound of firing and voices from the camp died away, as he pushed feverishly on towards Mansfield. It was rough riding through the timber for horse and man. Bumped against the trees, his body bruised, his face scratched and bleeding, and his clothes torn to pieces by the scrub, M’Intyre pressed forward, fearing pursuit, until dusk. Then his horse fell heavily. He mounted again and rode on for a time till his horse gave in; when, believing him to be wounded, the constable took of saddle and bridle, let him go, and running a short distance, concealed himself in a wombat hole, where he made a short memo. in his note book of what had occurred. The notes, which were evidently written under the strain of great fatigue and excitement, M’Intyre had some vague notion might be discovered in the future, should the bushrangers come upon his hiding-place and make away with him. It is obvious that unless the bushrangers came upon the man and his notes together, the chance of the latter ever being found in a wombat hole in the fastnesses of the bush was the remotest; but confused thought was natural enough in M’Intyre’s circumstances.

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