The True Story of the KellyGang of Bushrangers Chapter 15 page 7

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In some respects the Kellys at this period must have had even a harder time than the police. Far out in the mountain valleys of the King and the Dandongadale, where they spent a portion of their time, they were fairly safe from attack, and were able to indulge in fires and such other comforts as a bush camp affords, but apart from the necessity of renewing their stores of food, they had a craving for the society of their friends in the more inhabited districts round Beechworth and Greta, which they could only gratify at great risk. There is no doubt that they did so and that they spent many a stolen evening by the firesides of their sympathisers, but when in a radius of some twenty miles from Benalla they lived the life of hunted animals, always ready to run or stand at bay when the slightest sound gave them warning. They were younger and hardier men than Mr Hare and many of his troopers and able to stand the wear and tear under which Mr Hare’s health and spirits at length gave way. He told Captain Standish that he was no longer fit for active duty and confessed himself beaten for the time, with the result that at the beginning of July he was relieved of command in the district which was reassumed by Mr Nicolson, and almost immediately afterwards he returned to duty at the police depot in Melbourne. Very shortly before this, Captain Standish himself had gone back to the Commissioner’s office in Melbourne . His presence in the North East had contributed nothing material to any of the work done there. By his age and the fact that he had been engaged for many years in purely office work he was quite unfitted to take part in any active operations. His quarrel with Mr O’Connor prevented full use being made of the services of the trackers, and by all the officers under him, including even Mr Hare who showed no want of gratitude for the favour his chief bestowed on him, he was considered apathetic. His heart did not seem to be in the work of capturing the outlaws. He was essentially a club-man, and his assumption of command at Benalla was said to have been an unwilling concession to the opinion of Mr Berry, then at the head of the Government, who had declared that, in Captain Standish’s place, he would go to the North Eastern District and refuse to leave it until the outlaws were taken, dead or alive.

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