My friend and the villainous bar-tender, the latter with a broad grin on his ugly mug, had at once bailed up, and as there was no chance of help from my troopers, who by that time must have off-saddled and be attending to the horses at the stock-yard, some way off, I knew we were cornered and beaten.
“Captain,” said the bounder, “I guess I’ve got you. Bail up.”
“I’ll see you d——d first,” I replied.
“I’ve got you,” he retorted, “and I’m on the shoot. Sling your money on the counter, and”—this to my friend—“sling that bag down too.”
The squatter was standing with his hands above his head, so evidently could not do so, and the bushranger said to me: “Captain, sling that bag over here.”
“Rot!” was my discourteous reply; so he turned to the blackguard behind the bar, who was probably in league with him, and said, “Joe, you do it.” And the bag was promptly thrown to him.
Then he said to me, and I noticed he changed his voice, dropping the Yankee slang and idiom he had previously used, and speaking with a well-modulated and refined accent: “Captain, I don’t want anything from you.” (This was just as well, as I had nothing.) “But,” he continued, “how long start will you give me?”
I said: “Five minutes.”
“Word of honour?”
“Yes.”