The True Story of the KellyGang of Bushrangers Chapter 15 page 5
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For months the police searched and re-searched the mountains, sometimes acting on information, sometimes working on a chance, and an interesting volume might be written descriptive of their experiences in the bush, but in no case did they get a glimpse of the Kellys. Mr Hare, who was the life and soul of these expeditions, some years before his death published a book, which devoted many pages to accounts of this work, and yet he declares that he ‘has not given a hundredth part of what actually took place during the time that he was searching for the outlaws.’ He, however, mentions very many incidents which space forbids enumerating here. One occasion to which he refers was productive of more than passing effect upon the fortunes of the police, since it caused or aggravated a spirit of ill feeling between Captain Standish the Queensland officer, Mr O’Connor, which seriously hampered the operations of the police. Captain Standish, as has been mentioned, had a low opinion of the usefulness of the trackers under Mr O’Connor’s command, and one evening, when very important information arrived from a well to do farmer, describing carefully a locality where he had seen four men on the previous evening, and where he supposed them still to be, Captain Standish determined to go in pursuit without assistance from Mr O’Connor and the blacks.
On May 24, when the letter arrived, Captain Standish and Mr O’Connor were absent from the hotel in Benalla where the three officers lived together, but Mr Hare, who opened all the Commissioner’s correspondence, read it, and was so much impressed by the writer’s certainty that the men seen by him were the Kellys that he at once sent a message to the house where Captain Standish was dining, asking him to return. The Commissioner, who arrived within a few minutes, also considered the information excellent and talked over plans with Mr Hare, telling him to at once see the men and arrange for an early start next morning. In the course of the evening Mr O’Connor, too, returned to the hotel, and, addressing Mr Hare, asked, ‘What is the news?’ Mr Hare nodded towards Captain Standish, as though referring Mr O’Connor to him, and Mr O’Connor repeated the question, but Captain Standish refused to tell him anything, having previously instructed Mr Hare also to preserve secrecy. Mr O’Connor naturally felt very much aggrieved by this rebuff, as up to this time all the officers had treated one another confidentially, whereas afterwards bitterness and jealousy arose, in which Mr Hare as well as the Commissioner became involved with Mr O’Connor.
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