Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/69

 terminus of the railway. Better to split them up in bodies of a hundred and fifty each. One lot to stop at Clermont, another at Tambo; others at outside stations, such as Bowen Downs, Ayrshire Downs, Richmond Downs, Maneroo, Westlands, Northampton, and Malvern Hills. Say a hundred and fifty at Maranoa; same below St. George. Every station that a hundred and fifty men came to would demand police protection from the Government. Then, if you wanted to make a grand coup, send mounted messengers round and have all your forces concentrated, away from railways if possible, and force the running by putting a little more devil into the fight. They will have no railways to cart the Gatling guns and Nordenfeldts about.—Yours, etc.

Such were the missives which passed between the 'labour organisers' and their 'brother officers.' Small wonder that the rank and file were stirred up to deeds of wrong and outrage, stopping short by accident, or almost miracle, of the 'red fool-fury of the Seine.' Imagine the anxiety and apprehension at the lonely station, miles way from help, with a hundred and fifty horsemen, armed and threatening, arriving perhaps at midnight the terror of the women, the mingled wrath and despair of the men. And the temperate suggestion of the labour organiser to 'put a little more devil into the fight, to force the running!'

Doubtless it would, but not quite in the manner which this calculating criminal intended. Such a wave of righteous indignation would have been evoked from the ordinarily apathetic surface of Australian politics, that the culprits and their cowardly advisers would have been swept from the face of the earth.

If it be doubted for a moment whether the serious acts of violence and outrage alluded to were actually committed, or, as was unblushingly asserted by the so-called democratic organs, invented, exaggerated, or—most ludicrous attempt at deception of all—got up by capitalists and squatters for the purpose of throwing discredit upon Unionists, let a list of acts perpetrated in deliberate defiance of the law of the land be produced in evidence.

The Dagworth woolshed had seven armed men on watch, as the Unionists had threatened to burn it. Among them