'Then you may depend that rascal Peel is concerned in the matter,' said Harris, sitting up in bed.
'I forgot to tell you,' said Stevenson, 'that I came upon that fellow yesterday as I was drawing a carcase across the run, and leaving the poisoned baits in its track. It was in a scrub which my horse could hardly get through; and I had no idea that any human being was near me at the time. He might have speared me easily enough too, for I was unarmed and dismounted, and he touched me on the shoulder as I was stooping to place the bait to the ground. The fellow has some gratitude, I suppose; for, much as he hates white men, he knows he owes his life to me.'
'Twenty times over!' said Harris; 'for he would have been finished long ago but for you.'
'You told us, doctor,' continued the superintendent, 'that you extracted some slugs from his arm and shoulder the day you first saw him. How long, do you think, had those wounds been there?'
'About ten days or so, I should think.'
'What were the slugs like? a bullet cut up?'
'Yes.'
'Then the rascal is decidedly guilty! I will tell you how I found it out,' said Stevenson. 'Ever since you told me of the circumstance I have wondered how he got those wounds; and on my rides about this and neighbouring runs I have inquired, but could not hear that he had been shot at lately. In fact, ever since he was detected in those hut robberies, he has kept quiet, and out of white men's sight.
'Yesterday, on my way to the Edward, I called at the inn on the Wakool. In the bar I noticed a beautiful specimen of the "loouee," as the blacks call a rare bird which inhabits the mallee; and I asked the innkeeper who had stuffed it and set it up for him. He replied that a man who had been up on the Darling, making a collection of birds, had stopped there, and sold him this specimen. "But," added the man, "didn't he call at your place?"
'"No," I said; "did he tell you he was coming over?"