"If we let them get away first," said Mackay, "they won't think there's any need to hurry. Go an' swallow as much water as you can, an' get your water-bag primed up to the muzzle. Jack, you'd better make enough sandwiches from that damper of yours to carry the Shadow a couple o' days."
"Couldn't I go too, Shad?" said Jack, anxiously.
"You're a bit too fresh yet, Jack; you'd want too much water," was the sententious reply.
Jack turned away without a word to prepare the sandwiches.
A few minutes later the buggy containing Macguire and one of his chosen associates drove up, and stopped opposite the party, so that the departing bully might get rid of some of his vituperative eloquence. When he saw Mackay, his raging madness was painful to witness. Clearly his enmity, instead of dissolving, had been magnified tenfold by his humiliation.
"I'll get even with you for this," he yelled, shaking his fist at the object of his fury; "an' ye won't live long before ye knows it too."
Mackay stepped menacingly towards the buggy. "I ought to have killed ye, ye meeserable thief," he said; but the man holding the reins was too terrified to wait longer. With a wild slash of the whip he set the horses plunging madly across the sand on the back track to the township, and Macguire, leaning back with livid face, hurled his last shot.
"This country won't be big enough to hold us two!" he bellowed.
Mackay smiled a hard smile. "Then I reckon ye'd better get out of it while you're healthy," he murmured, as he turned to rejoin his companions.