“Go and see if those two men are dead, Tommy, If they are not, take their pistols away. Then make a big fire, and I will come and look at them.”
“All right, boss, but by and by.” He raised and assisted Gerrard into the cave, laid him down upon his blanket, and placed his head upon one of the bullet-riddled saddles, re-lit the extinguished fire, took off his shirt, tore off the back, and bandaged his master's thigh with it.
“You like smoke now, boss?” “Yes, fill my pipe before you go.” Five minutes later Tommy returned. “All three fellow dead,” he observed placidly, as he stooped down to the fire and lit his own pipe with a burning coal. “Big man me shoot got him bullet through chest; little man with black beard and nose like cockatoo you shoot, got him bullet through chest too, close up longa troat.”
Then he asked if he might go after the two horses, which, hobbled as they were, had gone off at the first sound of the firing, and were perhaps many miles away.
“All right, Tommy. We must not let them get too far away.”
The black boy grunted an assent, made the fire blaze up, and taking up his own and Gerrard's bridles, disappeared.
In less than half an hour he returned, riding one horse and leading the other, and found that Gerrard had risen and was looking at the bodies of the three men, which lay stark and stiff under the now bright starlight. Tommy's face wore an expression of supreme satisfaction as he jumped off his horse.
“Other fellow man bung{*} too,” he said in a complacent tone.
* Bung—-dead.
“Did you shoot him?” cried Gerrard, aghast at more bloodshed.