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The Story of Wild Will Enderby

Chapter XI. Constable Finnegan's Horse

page 181

Chapter XI. Constable Finnegan's Horse.

"Constable Finnegan! It would be a great blow to the Force if this case breaks down. Would you know the smooth-faced blackguard that molested you in the tent?"

"Bedad, I would, Sergeant. I'd pick him out of a hundred if I set eyes upon him."

"Then take your horse and go up the Gorge and look about for him. He knows something about this matter, and likely could give evidence to convict the prisoner. It is our duty, Constable Finnegan, to secure the ends of justice."

The logic of the worthy Sergeant was defective. Offended Justice must have a victim, no doubt: whether it be Isaac, or a "ram caught in the thicket." But the desired result is not likely to ensue if fact be subordinated to theory. Now the Sergeant having commenced at the wrong end by assuming the prisoner to be guilty, focussed circumstances so as to support the assumption; and thereby he lost every clue, which, if properly followed up, might have led to the detection of the real offender. For I will not pay my auditors so poor a compliment as to suppose that they imagine George Washington Pratt to have been guilty of the heinous crime alleged against him.

page 182

The constable arrayed himself in his war-paint and mounted his horse. It was a hot and weary day, and the way was long and tedious. To do him justice, he was most indefatigable in his inquiries. But no trace found he of 'the beardless one' till he came to the solitary African.

"Well, Sambo," said Mr. Finnegan,—Sambo being the dark-skinned variation of homo in the popular vocabulary,—"Well, Sambo, is it a pile ye're making there?"

"My golly, no!" and a smile diffused itself over his shining countenance. "Ribber's too high. Mighty little gold in dis stuff."

"Come up here," said the policeman, "I want to speak to yez."

Obedient to the buttons, the negro ascended the bank.

"Tell me now,—Is there a man living hereabouts without any hair on his face? A short, dark man, not very good looking?"

"Yes boss; I know de man. Got his eyes rove cro'-jack-brace fashion. Bad lot, dat fellow; no good anyhow."

"Where is he likely to be found?"

"'Bout a mile furder up. I see him go 'long jist now. Shouldn't wonder if he's gone to Brandy Ben's."

'Brandy Ben' was a notorious grog-seller, and was well known to the police. His abode was not far distant, and thither the constable proceeded.

Leaving his horse outside, he entered the hut. And this was the scene that greeted him,—

Seated on an empty gin-case was Brandy Ben, dis-page 183coursing music from a rag-enveloped comb, and beating time to the inartistic melody with vigorous slaps on his knee. On the mud floor, a sturdy digger in long thigh-boots, was dancing in grotesque fashion with a frowsy woman dressed in tawdry muslin. A row of men, seated on a bench at the further end of the apartment, howled drunken chorus to the abominable music; and one blear-eyed individual snapped his fingers, and shouted—"That's your sort! go it, old gal!"—with infinite hilarity.

Amongst the chorus, Constable Finnegan marked the man of whom he was in search. With considerate politeness, however, he waited for the termination of the dance before proceeding to business.

His politeness was poorly recompensed. Whilst he was interchanging civilities with the inmates of the hut, a man, bare-headed, and minus one shirt-sleeve, came hastily down the Gorge. The constable's horse stood invitingly in the way. Without pause or hesitation, he mounted into the saddle, and Constable Finnegan ran to the door just in time to see his steed disappearing at a provokingly rapid pace.

He shouted lustily,—he invoked all the lightnings of the law. He hurled maledictions innumerable and of direful import after the culprit. But the fugitive rider never looked back. The horse was gone beyond recall.

So he returned to the hut for consolation—

"When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
But in battalions."

'The beardless one' had escaped!

"Bad scran to it!" cried Constable Finnegan. "It's page 184the divil's own luck I have entirely. Will any gintleman oblige me by shaving his beard, so that I mayn't return empty-handed?"

But no one volunteered to make the capillary sacrifice.

"Give me a nip, Ben," said the unhappy member of the Force." It's choking I am wid blessing the vagabond. Upon my conscience, I'll 'requisition' the first horse I meet along the road."

"Why, look 'ere," growled Brandy Ben, "hif hit's honly a 'oss you want, you can take mine. He hain't fur hoff. But I hain't got hany saddle."

"Oh! bother the saddle. Shure I always ride best without one. Get him in at once, Ben, and maybe I'll overtake my respectable friend at the Rocks."

'The rocks' was a part of the track so blocked up with boulders as to render pedestrian exercise an unavoidable necessity. But before the constable was mounted on Brandy Ben's nag, the purloiner of Her Majesty's troop-horse, was up and beyond these impedimenta.

Nevertheless Constable Finnegan pressed on bravely. So there was presented to the wondering miners, the edifying spectacle of a hatless tatterdemalion dashing through the township on the constable's well-appointed steed, and the constable lumbering along ten minutes astern, on a bare-backed packhorse, of the hairy, loose-jointed type.