It was eight o'clock and Monday morning when the romantic rascals were
led away in unromantic bonds. Their arms were bound to their bodies,
their feet lashed to the stirrup-irons; they sat like packs upon quiet
station horses, carefully chosen for the nonce; they were tethered to a
mounted policeman apiece, each with leading-rein buckled to his left
wrist and Government revolver in his right hand. Behind the quartette
rode the officer in command, superbly mounted, watching ever all four
with a third revolver ready cocked. It seemed a small and yet an ample
escort for the two bound men.
But Stingaree was by no means in that state of Napoleonic despair which
his bent back and lowering countenance were intended to convey. He had
not uttered a word since the arrival of the police, whom he had suffered
to lift him on horseback, as he now sat, without raising his morose eyes
once. Howie, on the other hand, had offered a good deal of futile
opposition, cursing his captors as the fit moved him, and once
struggling so insanely in his bonds as to earn a tap from the wrong end
of a revolver and a bloody face for his pains. Stingaree glowered in
deep delight. His mate's part was as well acted as his own; but it was
he who had conceived them both, and expounded them in countless camps
against some such extremity as this. The result was in ideal accordance
with his calculations. The man who gave the trouble was the man to
watch. And Stingaree, chin on chest, was left in peace to evolve a way
of escape.
The chances were all adverse; he had never been less sanguine in his
life. Not that Stingaree had much opinion of the police; he had slipped
through their hands too often; but it was an unfortunate circumstance
that two of the present trio were among those whom he had eluded most
recently, and who therefore would be least likely to give him another
chance. A lightning student of his kind, he based his only hope upon an
accurate estimate of these men, and applied his whole mind to the triple
task. But it was a single task almost from the first; for the policeman
in charge of him was none other than his credulous old friend, Sergeant
Cameron from Clear Corner; and Howie's custodian, a young trooper run
from the same mould as Constable Tyler and many a hundred more, in whom
a thick skull cancelled a stout heart. Both were brave men; neither was
really to be feared. But the man behind upon the thoroughbred, the man
in front, the man now on this side and now on that, with his braying
laugh and his vindictive voice--triumphant as though he had taken the
bushrangers himself, and a blatant bully in his triumph--was none other
than the formidable Superintendent whose undying animosity the
bushrangers had earned by the two escapades associated with his name.
Yet the outlaw never flattered him with word or look, never lifted chin
from chest, never raised an eye or opened his mouth until Howie's knock
on the head caused him to curse his mate for a fool who deserved all he
got. The thoroughbred was caracoling on his other side in an instant.
"You ain't one, are you?" cried the taunting tongue of Superintendent
Cairns. "Not much fool about Stingaree!"
The time had come for a reply.
"So I thought until yesterday," sighed the bushranger. "But now I'm not
so sure."
"Not so sure, eh? You were sure enough last time we met, my beauty!"
"Yes! I had some conceit of myself then," said Stingaree, with another
of his convincing sighs.
"To say nothing of when you guyed me, damn you!" added the
Superintendent, below his breath and through his teeth.
"Well," replied the outlaw, "you've got your revenge. I must expect you
to rub it in."
"My fine friend," rejoined Cairns, "you may expect worse than that, and
still you won't be disappointed."
Stingaree made no reply; and it would have taken a very shrewd eye to
have read deeper than the depth of sullen despair expressed in every
inch of his bound body and every furrow of his downcast face. Even the
vindictive Cairns ceased for a time to crow over so abject an adversary
in so bitter an hour. Meanwhile, the five horses streamed slowly through
the high lights and heavy shadows of a winding avenue of scrub. It was
like a hot-house in the dense, low trees: not a wandering wind, not a
waking bird; but five faces that dripped steadily in the shade, and all
but caught fire in the sun. Ahead rode Howie, dazed and bleeding, with
his callous young constable; the sergeant and his chief, with Stingaree
between them, now brought up the rear. By degrees Stingaree raised his
chin a little, but still looked neither right nor left.
"Cheer up!" cried the chief, with soothing irony.
"I feel the heat," said the bound man, uncomplainingly. "And it was just
about here it happened."
"What happened?"
"We overtook the Church militant here on earth," rejoined the
bushranger, with rueful irreverence.
"Well, you ran against a snag that time, Mr. Sanguinary Stingaree!"
"I couldn't resist turning Howie into the Bishop and making myself his
mouthpiece. I daren't let him open his lips! It wasn't the offertory
that was worth having; it was the fun of rounding up that congregation
on the homestead veranda, and never letting them spot a thing till we'd
showed our guns. There hadn't been a hitch, and never would have been if
that old Bishop hadn't run all those miles barefoot over hot sand and
taken us unawares."
Made with wry humor and a philosophic candor, alike germane to his
predicament, these remarks seemed natural enough to one knowing little
of Stingaree. They seemed just the sort of things that Stingaree would
say. The effect, however, was rather to glorify Bishop Methuen at the
expense of Superintendent Cairns, who strove to reverse it with some
dexterity.
"You certainly ran against a snag," he repeated, "and now your mate's
run against another." He gave the butt of his ready pistol a significant
tap. "But I'm the worst snag that ever either of you struck," he went on
in his vainglory. "Make no mistake about that. And the worst day's work
that ever you did in your life, Mr. Sanguinary Stingaree, was when you
dared to play at being little crooked Cairns."
Stingaree took a first good look at his man. After all he was not so
crooked on horseback as he had seemed on foot at dusk in the Victorian
bush; his hump was even less pronounced than Stingaree himself had made
it on Rosanna; it looked more like a ridge of extra muscle across a pair
of abnormally broad and powerful shoulders. There was the absence of
neck which this deformity suggests; there was a great head lighted by
flashing and indignant eyes, but mounted only on its mighty chin. The
bushranger was conceited enough to find in the flesh a coarser and more
common type than that created by himself for the honor of the road. But
this did not make the real Superintendent a less formidable foe.
"The most poetic justice!" murmured Stingaree, and resumed in an instant
his apathetic pose.
"It serves you jolly well right, if that's what you mean," the
Superintendent snarled. "You've yourself and your own mighty cheek to
thank for taking me out of my shell and putting me on your tracks in
earnest. But it was high time they knew the cut of my jib up here; the
fools won't forget me again in a hurry. And you, you devil, you sha'n't
forget me till your dying day!"
On Stingaree's off-side Sergeant Cameron was also hanging an insulted
head. But the bushranger laughed softly in his chest.
"Someone has got to do your dirty work," said he. "I did it that time,
and the Bishop has done it now; but you shouldn't blame me for helping
your fellows to bring a murderer to justice."
"You guyed me," said Cairns through his teeth. "I heard all about it.
You guyed me, blight your soul!"
Stingaree felt that he was missing a strong face finely convulsed with
passion--as indeed he was. But he had already committed the indiscretion
of a repartee, which was scarcely consistent with an attitude of extreme
despair. A downcast silence seemed the safest policy after all.
"It used to be forty miles to the Corner," he murmured, after a time.
"We can't have come more than ten."
"Not so much," snapped the Superintendent.
"Going to stop for feed at Mazeppa Station?"
"That's my business."
"It's a long day for three of you, in this heat, with two of us."
"The time won't hang heavy on _our_ hands."
"Not heavy enough, I should have thought. I wonder you didn't bring some
of the boys from Mulfera along with you."
Superintendent Cairns brayed his high, harsh laugh.
"Yes, you wonder, and so did they," said he. "But I know a bit too much.
There'll always be sympathy among scum like them for thicker scum like
you!"
"You're too suspicious," said Stingaree, mildly. "But I was thinking of
the Bishop and the boss."
"They've gone their own way," growled Cairns, "and it's just as well it
wasn't our way. I'd have stood no interference from them!"
That had been his attitude on the station. Stingaree had heard of his
rudeness to those to whom the whole credit of the capture belonged; the
man revealed his character as freely as an angry child; and, indeed, a
childish character it was. Arrogance was its strength and weakness: a
suggestion had only to be made to call down either the insolence of
office or the malice of denial for denial's sake.
"I wish you'd stop a bit at Mazeppa," whined Stingaree, drooping like a
candle in the heat.
The station roofs gleamed through the trees far off the track.
"Why?"
"Because I'm feeling sick."
"Gammon! You've got some friends there; on you push!"
"But you will camp somewhere in the heat of the day?"
"I'll do as I think fit. I sha'n't consult you, my fine friend."
Stingaree drooped and nodded, lower and lower; then recovered himself
with a jerk, like one battling against sleep. The party pushed on for
another hour. The heat was terrible; the bound men endured torments in
their bonds. But the nature of the Superintendent, deformed like his
body, declared itself duly at every turn, and the more one prisoner
groaned and the other blasphemed, the greater the zest and obduracy of
the driving force behind them.
Noon passed; the scanty shadows lengthened; and Howie gave more trouble
of an insensate sort. They reined up, and lashed him tighter; he had
actually loosened his cords. But Stingaree seemed past remonstrance with
friend or foe, and his bound body swayed from side to side as the
little cavalcade went on at a canter to make up for lost time.
[Illustration: Stingaree toppled out of the saddle.]
He was leading now with the kindly sergeant, and his mind had never been
more alert. Behind them thundered the recalcitrant Howie with constable
and Superintendent on either side. They were midway between Mazeppa and
Clear Corner, or some fifteen miles from either haunt of men. Stingaree
pulled himself upright in the saddle as by a superhuman effort, and
shook off the helping hand that held him by one elbow.
He was about to do a thing at which even his courage quailed, and he
longed for the use of his right arm. It was not absolutely bound; the
hand and wrist had been badly hurt in the Sunday's fray--so badly that
it had been easy to sham a fracture, and have hand and wrist in splints
before the arrival of the police. They still hung before him in a sling,
his good right hand and fore-arm, stiff and sore enough, yet strong and
ready at a moment's notice, when the moment came. It had not come, and
was not coming for a long time, when Stingaree set his teeth, lurched
either way--and toppled out of the saddle in the path of the cantering
hoofs. His lashed feet held him in the stirrups; the off stirrup-leather
had come over with his weight; and there at his horse's hoofs, kicked
and trampled and smothered with blood and dust, he dragged like an
anchor, without sign of life.
And it was worse even than it looked, for the life never left him for an
instant, nor ever for an instant did he fail to behave as though it had.
Minutes later, when they had stopped his horse, and cut him down from
the stirrups, and carried him into the shade of a hop-bush off the
track, and when Stingaree dared to open his eyes, he was nearer closing
them perforce, and the scene swam before him with superfluous realism.
Cairns and Cameron, dismounted (while the trooper sat aloof with Howie
in the saddle), were at high words about their prostrate prisoner. Not a
syllable was lost on Stingaree.
"You may put him across the horse yourself," said the sergeant. "I won't
have a hand in it. But make sure you haven't killed him as it
is--travelling a sick man like that."
"Killed him? He's got his eyes open!" cried Cairns in savage triumph.
Stingaree lay blinking at the sky. "Do you still refuse to do your
duty?"
"Cruelty to animals is no duty of mine," declared the sergeant: "let
alone my fellowmen, bushrangers or no bushrangers."
"And you?" thundered Cairns at the mounted constable.
"I'm with the sergeant," said he. "He's had enough."
"Right!" cried the Superintendent, producing a note-book and scribbling
venomously. "You both refuse! You will hear more of this; meanwhile,
sergeant, I should like to know what your superior wisdom may be pleased
to suggest."
"Send a cart back for him," said Cameron. "It's the only way he's fit to
travel."
Stingaree sought to prop himself upon the elbow of the splintered wrist
and hand.
"There are no more bones broken that I know of," said he, faintly. "But
I felt bad before, and now I feel worse."
"He looks it, too," observed the sergeant, as Stingaree, ghastly enough
beneath his blood and dust, rolled over on his back once more, and lay
effectively with closed eyes. Even the Superintendent was impressed.
"Then what's to be done with him?" he exclaimed, with an oath. "What's
to be done?"
"If you ask me," returned Cameron, "I should make him comfortable where
he is; after all, he's a human being, and done no murder, that we should
run the risk of murdering him. Leave him to me while you two push on
with his mate; then one of you can get back with the spring-cart before
sundown; but trust me to look after him till you do."
Stingaree held his breath where he lay. His excitement was not to be
betrayed by the opening of an eye. And yet he knew that the
Superintendent was looking the sergeant up and down, and he guessed what
was passing through that suspicious mind.
"Trust you!" rasped the dictatorial voice at last. "That's the very
thing I'm not inclined to do, Sergeant Cameron."
"Sir!"
"Keep your temper, sergeant. I don't say you'd let him go. But I've got
to remember that this man has twisted you round his finger before
to-day, led you by the hand like a blessed old child, and passed himself
off for me! Look at the fellow; look at me; and ask yourself candidly if
you're the man for the job. But don't ask me, unless you want my opinion
of you a bit plainer still. No; you go on with the others. The two of
you can manage Howie; if you can't, you put a bullet through him! This
is my man; and I'm his, by the hokey, as he'll know if he tries any of
his tricks while you're gone!"
Stingaree did not move a muscle. He might have been dead; and in his
disappointment it was the easier to lie as though he were. Really
bruised, really battered, really faint and stiff and sore, to say
nothing of his bonds, he felt himself physically no match for so young a
man--with the extra breadth of shoulder and the extra length of arm
which were part and parcel of his deformity. With the elderly sergeant
he might have had a chance, man to man, one arm to two; but with
Superintendent Cairns his only weapons were his wits. He lay quite still
and reviewed the situation, as it was, and as it had been. In the very
moment of his downfall, by instinctive presence of mind he had preserved
the use of his right hand, and that was a still unsuspected asset of
incalculable worth. It had been the nucleus of all his plans; without a
hand he must have resigned himself to the inevitable from the first.
Then he had split up the party. He heard the sergeant and the constable
ride off with Howie, exactly as he had intended two of the three captors
to do. His fall alone introduced the element of luck. It might have
killed or maimed him; but the risk had been run with open eyes. Being
alive and whole, he had reduced the odds from three against two to man
and man; and the difference was enormous, even though one man held all
the cards. Against Howie the odds were heavier than ever, but Howie was
eliminated from present calculations. And as Stingaree made them with
the upturned face of seeming insensibility, he heard a nonchalant step
come and go, but knew an eye was on him all the time, and never opened
his own till the striking of a match was followed by the smell of bush
tobacco.
The shadow of the hop-bush was spreading like spilt ink, and for the
moment Stingaree thought he had it to himself. But a wreath of blue
smoke hovered overhead; and when he got to his elbow, and glanced
behind, there sat Cairns in his shirt-sleeves, filling the niche his
body made in the actual green bush, a swollen wet water-bag at his feet,
his revolver across his knees. There was an ominous click even as
Stingaree screwed round where he lay.
"Give me a drink!" he cried at sight of the humid canvas bag.
"Why should I?" asked the Superintendent, smoking on.
"Because I haven't had one since we started--because I'm parched with
thirst."
"Parch away!" cried the creature of suspicion. "You can't help yourself,
and I can't help you with this baby to nurse."
And he fondled the cocked revolver in his hands.
"Very well! Don't give me one!" exclaimed Stingaree, and dealt the moist
bag a kick that sent a jet of cold water spurting over his foot. He
expected to be kicked himself for that; he was only cursed, the bag
snatched out of his reach, and deeply drained before his eyes.
"I was going to give you some," said Cairns, smacking his lips. "Now
your tongue may hang out before I do."
Stingaree left the last word with the foe: it was part of his
preconceived policy. He still regretted his solitary retort, but not for
a moment the more petulant act which he had just committed. His boots
had been removed after his fall; one of his socks was now wet through,
and he spent the next few minutes in taking it off with the other foot.
The lengthy process seemed to afford his mind a certain pensive
entertainment. It was a shapely and delicate white foot that lay
stripped at last--a foot that its owner, with nothing better to do,
could contemplate with legitimate satisfaction. But Superintendent
Cairns, noting his prisoner's every look, and putting his own confident
interpretation on them all, cursed him afresh for a conceited pig, and
filled another pipe, with the revolver for an instant by his side.
Stingaree took no interest in his proceedings; the revolver he
especially ignored, and lay stretched before his captor, one sock off
and one sock on, one arm in splints and sling and the other bound to his
ribs, a model prisoner whose last thought was of escape. His legs,
indeed, were free; but a man who could not sit on a horse was not the
man to run away. And then there was the relentless Superintendent
sitting over him, pipe in mouth, but revolver again in hand, and a
crooked finger very near the trigger.
The fiery wilderness still lay breathless in the great heat, but the
lengthening shadow of the hop-bush was now a thing to be thankful for,
and in it the broken captive fell into a fine semblance of natural
slumber. Cairns watched with alternate envy and suspicion; for him there
could not be a wink; but most likely the fellow was shamming all the
time. No ruse, however, succeeded in exposing the sham, which the
Superintendent copied by breathing first heavily and then stertorously,
with one eye open and on his man. Stingaree never opened one of his:
there was no change in the regular breathing, in the peaceful expression
of the blood-stained face: asleep the man must be. The Superintendent's
own experiments had gone to show him that no extremity need necessarily
keep one awake in such heat. He stifled a yawn that was no part of his
performance. His pipe was out; he struck a match noisily on his boot;
and Stingaree just stirred, as naturally as any infant. But Stingaree's
senses were incredibly acute. He smelt every whiff of the rekindled
pipe, knew to ten seconds when it went out once more, and listened in an
agony for another match. None was struck. Was the Superintendent himself
really asleep this time? He breathed as though he were; but so did
Stingaree; and yet was there hope in the fact that his own greatest
struggle all this time had been against the very thing he feigned.
At last he opened one eye a little; it was met by no answering furtive
glance; he opened the other, and there could be no more doubt. The
terrible Superintendent was dozing in his place; but it was the lightest
sort of doze, the eyes were scarcely closed, and all but watching
Stingaree, as the cocked revolver in the relaxed hand all but covered
him.
The prisoner felt that for the moment he was unseen, forgotten, but that
the lightest movement of his body would open those terrible eyes once
and for all. Be it remembered that he was lying under them lengthwise,
on the bound arm, with the arm in the sling uppermost, and easily to be
freed, but yet the most salient part of the recumbent figure, and that
on which the hidden eyes still seemed fixed, for all their lids. To make
the least movement there, to attempt the slowest withdrawal of hand and
arm, was to court the last disaster of discovery in such an act. But to
lie motionless down to the thighs, and to execute a flank movement with
the leg uppermost, was a far less perilous exploit. It was the leg with
the bare foot: every detail had been foreseen. And now at last the bare
foot hovered over the revolver and the hand it held, while the upper man
yet lay like a log under those drowsy, dreadful eyes.
Stingaree took a last look at the barrel drooping from the slackened
hand; the back of the hand lay on the ground, the muzzle of the barrel
was filled with sand, and yet the angle was such that it was by no means
sure whether a bullet would bury itself in the sand or in Stingaree. He
took the risk, and with his bare toe he touched the trigger sharply.
There was a horrible explosion. It brought the drowsy Superintendent to
his senses with such a jerk that it was as though the smoking pistol had
leapt out of his hand a thing alive, and so into the hand that flashed
to meet it from the sling. And almost in the same second--while the
double cloud of smoke and sand still hung between them--Stingaree
sprang from the ground, an armed man once more.
"Sit where you are!" he thundered. "Up with those hands before I shoot
them to shreds! Your life's in less danger than mine has been all day,
but I'll wing you limb by limb if you offer to budge!"
With uplifted hands above his ears, the deformed officer sat with head
and shoulders depressed into the semblance of one sphere. Not a syllable
did he utter; but his upturned eyes shot indomitable fires. Stingaree
stood wriggling and fumbling at the coil which bound his left arm to his
side; suddenly the revolver went off, as if by accident, but so much by
design that there dangled two ends of rope, cut and burnt asunder by
lead and powder. In less than a minute the bushranger was unbound, and
before the minute was up he had leapt upon the Superintendent's
thoroughbred. It had been tethered all this time to a tree, swishing
tails with the station hack which Stingaree had ridden as a captive; he
now rode the thoroughbred, and led the hack, to the very feet of the
humiliated Cairns.
"I will thank you for that water-bag," said Stingaree. "I am much
obliged. And now I'll trouble you for that nice wideawake. You really
don't need it in the shade. Thank you so much!"
He received both bag and hat on the barrel of the Government revolver,
hooking the one to its proper saddle-strap, and clapping on the other at
an angle inimitably imitative of the outwitted officer.
"I won't carry the rehearsal any further to your face," continued
Stingaree; "but I can at least promise you a more flattering portrait
than the last; and this excellent coat, which you have so considerately
left strapped to your saddle, should contribute greatly to the
verisimilitude. Dare I hope that you begin to appreciate some of the
points of my performance so far as it has gone? The pretext on which I
bared my foot for its delicate job under your very eyes, eh? Not so vain
as it looked, in either sense, I fancy! Should you have said that your
hand would recoil from a revolver the moment it went off? You see, I
staked my life on it, and I've won. And what about that fall? It was the
lottery! I was prepared to have my head cracked like an egg, and it's
still pretty sore. The broken wrist wasn't your fault; it had passed
into the accepted situation before you turned up. And you would
certainly have seen that I was shamming sleep if we hadn't both been so
genuinely sleepy at the time. I give you my word, I very nearly threw
up the whole thing for forty winks! Any other point on which you could
wish enlightenment? Then let me thank you with all my heart for one of
the worst days, and some of the greatest moments, in my whole career."
But the crooked man answered never a word, as he sat in a ball with
uplifted palms, and glaring, upturned, unconquerable eyes.
"Good-by, Mr. Superintendent Cairns," said Stingaree. "I'm afraid I've
been rather cruel to you--but you were never very nice to me!"
Sergeant Cameron was driving the spring-cart, toward sundown, after a
variety of unforeseen delays. Of a sudden out of the pink haze came a
galloping figure, slightly humped, in the inspector's coat and
wideawake, with a bare foot through one stirrup and only a sock on its
fellow.
"Where's Stingaree?" screamed the sergeant, pulling up. And the galloper
drew rein at the driven horse's head.
"Dead!" said he, thickly. "He was worse than we thought. You fetch him
while I----"
But this time the sergeant knew that voice too well, and his right hand
had flown to the back of his belt. Stingaree's shot was only first by a
fraction of a second, but it put a bullet through the brain of the horse
between the shafts, so that horse and shafts came down together, and the
sergeant fired into the earth as he fell across the splashboard.
Stingaree pressed soft heels into the thoroughbred's ribs and thundered
on and on. Soon there was a gate to open, and when he listened at that
gate all was still behind him and before; but far ahead the rolling
plain was faintly luminous in the dusk, and as this deepened into night
a cluster of terrestrial lights sprang out with the stars. Stingaree
knew the handful of gaunt, unsheltered huts the lights stood for. They
were an inn, a store, and police-barracks: Clear Corner on the map. The
bushranger galloped straight up to the barracks, but skirted the knot of
men in the light before the veranda, and went jingling round into the
yard. The young constable in charge ran through the building and met him
dismounted at the back.
"What's the matter, sir?"
"He's gone!"
"Stingaree?"
"He was worse than we thought. Your man all right?"
"No trouble whatever, sir. Only sick and sorry and saying his prayers
in a way you'd never credit. Come and hear him."
"I must come and see him at once. Got a fresh horse in?"
"I have so! In and saddled in the stall. I thought you might want one,
sir, and ran up Barmaid, Stingaree's own mare, that was sent out here
from the station when we had the news."
"That was very thoughtful of you. You'll get on, young man. Now lead the
way with that lamp."
This time Stingaree had spoken in gasps, like a man who had ridden very
far, and the young constable, unlike his sergeant, did not know his
voice of old. Yet it struck him at the last moment as more unlike the
voice of Superintendent Cairns than the hardest riding should have made
it, and with the key in the door of the cell the young fellow wheeled
round and held the lamp on high. That instant he was felled to the
floor, the lamp went down and out with a separate yet simultaneous
crash, and Stingaree turned the key.
"Howie! Not a word--out you come!"
The burly ruffian crept forth with outstretched hands apart.
"What! Not even handcuffed?"
"No; turned over a new leaf the moment we left you, and been praying
like a parson for 'em all to hear!"
"This chap can do the same when he comes to himself. Lies pretty still,
doesn't he? In with him!"
The door clanged. The key was turned. Stingaree popped it into his
pocket.
"The later they let him out the better. Here's the best mount you ever
had. And my sweetheart's waiting for me in the stable!"
Outside, in front, before the barracks veranda, an inquisitive little
group heard first the clang of the door within, and presently the
clatter of hoofs coming round from the yard. Stingaree and Howie--a
white flash and a bay streak--swept past them as they stood confounded.
And the dwindling pair still bobbed in sight, under a full complement of
stars, when a fresh outcry from the cell, and a mighty hammering against
its locked door, broke the truth to one and all.