"It was hardly a fair struggle, was it, for Pearson was so much stronger than your brother, who must have been tired too? It must be unpleasant to have one's brother killed before one's face. Do you find it so?" He looked up with a simple, inquiring glance at Alec as he spoke, and laughed to see how white the boy had grown.
Whilst he was speaking, one of the men who was holding the horses walked up to him and remonstrated with him for his brutal behaviour. He was a great, big, honest-looking fellow, with kind blue eyes and a short curly yellow beard, who looked strangely out of place in the company he was with, and whose reckless, dare-devil expression did not seem quite natural to him. Alec could not hear what he said, but he recognised the voice as being that of the man who had shouted out an answer to Keggs when he was boasting that he was equal with the boys at last.
Starlight listened to what this young fellow had to say, and then, without turning his head, he looked at him between his half-shut lids and said in a slightly sardonic voice—
"You don't seem to enjoy your new profession, Mr. Crosby. Don't you think you had better go back to that pleasant old fellow, your uncle, and act the prodigal nephew? But understand this, once for all, I don't put up with contradiction or allow interference. So let's have no more of these sanctimonious airs; remember you are just as much a bushranger—I'm not frightened of the word—as I am, although you have not tried your hand at sticking any one up yet, or anything else, as far as I can see, but eat and drink with the best of us."
"And never will do anything for you, Heaven willing, from to-night," said Crosby, as he stepped a pace or two to one side.
"Oh, he'll come round," whispered Starlight to Wetch, the man on his left, a trusty henchman this, who had no qualms of conscience, and who had sold himself body and soul to his leader.
A moment or two after this the men who had been looking for water came back and said that they could find none, and Starlight, who owed his success to the quickness of his movements, and to the fact that he never lost time in unnecessary halts during his forays, ordered a start. Whilst Alec was standing, guarded by the two men who had hold of him, Como came bounding to his side. The dog had rushed to Geordie when he was thrown to the ground by Pearson, but as the lad had made no responsive movement when he had licked his hands and face he had left him and sought Alec. The dog was wild with delight at finding one of his masters, and sprang up and licked Alec's white cheek and fawned upon him. One of the men kicked the dog to one side, and it howled with pain. Starlight, whose back had been turned for a moment, looked round and, seeing what it was, sang out—
"Quiet that dog; put a bullet through his head, some one."
But this was too much for Alec to bear passively. A passionate love for animals was one of his strongest feelings, and to hear the order given for Como's death was more than he could endure. With a sudden wrench he tore himself out of the grasp of the two men that held him, for he had been standing so quietly that their hold upon him had gradually grown slack. He knelt on the ground, and flung his arms round the dog that his brother had loved so much, and with his black brows drawn down he looked up at Starlight, and said, quite calmly—
"Don't shoot the dog."