The True Story of the KellyGang of Bushrangers Chapter 16 page 4
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During this time their lived principally within a radius of twelve miles from the Kellys’ home at Greta. Police agents were watching them, but while they kept quiet Mr Nicolson would not have them disturbed unless a chase was practically certain to end in capture. Acting on this principle he let one chance go which Mr Sadlier thought should have been seized upon, though as a rule he was in perfect accord with Mr Nicolson. In Wangaratta one day Mr Sadlier received information from an agent that on the previous evening five armed men, four of whom were supposed to be the outlaws, had been seen by him near the house of Tom Lloyd, not far from Greta. He had passed them, he said, unobserved. Mr Sadlier telegraphed the information to Mr Nicolson at Benalla and advised a search. On instructions from Mr Nicolson he went by train to join the other officers at Benalla, but was unable to take with him his informant as Mr Nicolson asked him to do, since the man had been drinking and could not be found in time. On a consultation between Mr Nicolson, Mr Sadlier, and Mr O’Connor, it was decided to send out a search party before daybreak, and horses were saddled up and the men warned to be in readiness for a start at one o’clock. Mr Sadlier then went away to rest, but on his return at one o’clock found that Mr Nicolson had changed his mind and issued orders for the abandonment of the exhibition. He and Mr O’Connor had talked the matter over in Mr Sadleir’s absence, and, not feeling sure of that officer’s ability to find the spot, and considering, also, that it was bad stony ground for trackers to work in, while the outlaws being on foot, would leave a very poor trail, they thought under the circumstances it was wiser to make no move. Mr Sadlier was not unnaturally annoyed, and a good deal was made of the incident by Captain Standish and others unfriendly to Mr Nicolson. He however pointed out that in addition to other reasons for inaction was the fact that the informant was the same man who had endeavoured to send the police off to the head of the King River when the outlaws were at Euroa, and one, therefore, on whom it was not safe to rely. Info rmation was steadily improving, and an unsuccessful dash at the outlaws might have awoken them from their sense of false security, and driven them away to the distant mountain country of Tomgroggin, in New South Wales . In the cases where Mr Nicolson did take action, he made great use of the trackers, who were instrumental in finding more than one of the Kellys’ deserted camps and on one occasion picked up the tracks of a man near Mrs Byrne’s house, which, from the shape of the footprints, Mr Nicolson was sure were made by Joe Byrne, while other tracks indicated that the gully in which lay the Byrnes’ and the Sherritts’ houses had been visited by the whole gang on horseback. This evidence corroborated the information which was given from time to time by Aaron Sherritt and one of his younger brothers, who was also in the confidence of the outlaws and had now begun to bring tales of them to the police. Joe Byrne, who was the literary man of the gang, used frequently to indulge in letter writing. One of his compositions, posted in September by young Sherritt was a threatening letter to Detective Ward and other police, warning them of mischief to happen before the end of the month, and at the outlaw’s own request a notice of the letter was published in a local paper.
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