The Queen's Advocate

by Arthur W. Marchmont

His companion hesitated at this, then clubbed his gun and appeared to be about to attack me, when he suddenly changed his mind and made a dart for the horses. I dashed after him, and as he vaulted into the saddle I fired at his horse and wounded it. Uttering a cry of rage, he leapt with extraordinary agility to the unwounded horse, and might then have got off had not the reins of both animals become entangled. Before he could disengage them I had closed up to him.

I called to him to surrender, but he had plenty of fight in him, and, taking me no doubt for the peasant I looked, he first struck at me furiously with his gun, and then tried to ride me down.

I checked that effort with a bullet in his horse’s head, however, and threatened to put one into the man himself if he did not submit. But still he would not.

Leaping free of the falling horse he surprised me by running back down the hill helter-skelter towards the girl, who stood watching us with breathless interest. I thought he meant to attack her, and, wild with sudden anger, I rushed after him. He had apparently remembered, however, that his comrade’s gun was loaded and his object was to secure it.

But Chris stopped this. The weapon lay near the girl and Chris sprang forward and snarled so savagely looking so formidable and dangerous, that the man hesitated, and before his hesitation was over I caught up and closed with him. Over and over we rolled in the dusty road in a fierce, hand-to-hand tussle, writhing, kicking, and sprawling as we gripped each other in that desperate wrestle. But I had the advantage of method. I was Cumberland bred, and in my boyhood had learnt some tricks and falls which had stood me in good stead before now in many a “scrap” in my rough-and-tumble mining days in Colorado and Montana.

I got my grip of him presently, and bit by bit moved my hands up till my fingers were playing on his windpipe, and he was seeing stars as I dashed his thick head again and again on the hard road, until all the fight and all his senses too were knocked out of him.

Then I rose, and taking the reins from the girl’s horse, I tied him up securely with them.

All this time I had not spoken to her, except that first sentence; but I had caught her great grey eyes fixed upon me questioningly as she followed every action. Before going to her I had a look at the man I had shot, and found his leg was broken between the knee and the ankle. I had some rough knowledge of surgery—one picks up such things knocking about the world as I had—so I probed about with my knife and found the bullet, which was in the muscular calf, cleansed the wound as best I could, and set the bone. Then I placed him in as comfortable a position as I could, and told him not to move until I could do more.

This done, I rose and went to the girl. She was now leaning against a boulder by the wayside, deathly pale, and to my infinite concern I saw that her dress was all blood-stained. One of the coward’s bullets must have hit her, I thought.

“Are you hit?” I asked. I spoke in Serb, as I was more familiar with that than any other of the Balkan languages.