"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.
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