“‘A man and a woman were coming down a gully from the direction of the mountain; they were near enough to see me, and it was no use making a bolt of it. I should only lose my life. Anyhow, I couldn’t leave the flock. I should get flogged for that. No excuse was taken for anything of that sort in those days. Following the man was a young gin with a lot of things on her back as if they had been shifting camp. She was much like any other black girl of her age, sixteen or thereabouts, maybe less; they grow up fast and get old fast, too, specially when they are worked hard, beaten, and brutally treated, as most of them are, and this one certainly was. Poor Mary! The man had no boots, and his trousers were ragged, he was mostly dressed in kangaroo skins, and had a fur cap on.
“‘He had a long beard down to his chest; his black hair fell in a mat over his shoulders. He carried a double-barrelled gun, and had a belt with a pouch in it round his waist. He looked like the pictures of Robinson Crusoe, but I didn’t feel inclined to laugh when he came close up and stared me in the face. I had seen, ay, lived with criminals of all sorts since I first came to Tasmania, but such a savage, blood-thirsty-looking brute as the man before me, I had never come across before. He saw that I was afraid; well I might be—if he had shot me there and then, it was only what he had done to others. With a fiendish grin that made him, if possible, more beast-like in appearance, he said: “Did ye ever see Mick Brady afore? No! Well, ye see him now. Maybe ye won’t live long enough to forget him!”
“‘“I’ve heard of you,” I said, “of course.” I tried to look cool, but my teeth chattered, for all the day was so hot. “I’m a Government man, like yourself. I’ve never done you any harm that I know of.”
“‘“No harm!” he shouted, “no harm! Aren’t ye one of old Herbert’s shepherds—a lot of mean crawlers that work for a bloody tyrant, and inform on poor starving brutes like me that’s been driven to take to the bush by cruelty and injustice of every kind. I came here to shoot you, and shoot you I will, and your dog too; the dingos and the tigers may work their will on the flock afterwards. He’ll feel that a d—d sight more than the loss of a shepherd. I know him, the hard-hearted old slave-driver!” God forgive him for miscalling a good man and a kind master.
“‘“Don’t shoot the dog,” I said, “he’s the best I ever had—a prisoner’s life’s not much in this country, but a dog like him you don’t see every day.”
“‘“Kneel down,” he said, “and don’t waste time; ye can say a short prayer to God Almighty, or the devil, whichever ye favour most. Old Nick’s given me a lift, many a time.”
“‘He stood there, with the death-light in his red-rimmed, wolfish eyes, and no more mercy in them than a tiger’s, lapping the blood of a Hindoo letter-carrier. When I was a soldier I’d seen the poor things brought in from the jungle, with their throats torn out, and mangled beyond knowing. Surely man was never in a worse case or nearer death. Strangely, I felt none of the fear which I did when I saw him first. I had no hope, but I prayed earnestly to God, believing that a very few moments would suffice to place me beyond mortal terrors.
“‘The girl meanwhile had crept closer to us and stood with her large eyes wide open, half in surprise, half in terror—as she leaned her laden back against one of the rock pillars which stood around. She murmured a few words in her own language—I knew it slightly—against bloodshed, and for mercy. But he turned on her with a savage oath, and made as though he would add her murder to the long list of his crimes.
CHAPTER VII
“‘At that moment, the last I ever expected to see on earth, the black girl uttered a sudden cry. The report of a gun was heard, as a bullet passed between me and Brady, flattening itself against the rock where I had been leaning just before. At the same time four men dashed across the gully and made for him. He looked at me with devilish malignity for a moment, but I suppose, wanting the charge in his gun for his own defence, turned and fled with extraordinary speed towards the forest, the police—for such they were—with a soldier and the informer, firing at him as he went. Their guns were the old-fashioned tower muskets; they were bad shots at best—so the girl and he disappeared in the thick wood, unhurt as far as I could see. I fell on my face, I know, and thanked God before I rose—the God of our fathers, who had answered my prayer and delivered me out of the hand of the “bloody and deceitful man,” in the words of the Psalmist. I took my sheep home early, and put them in the paling yard—dog proof it was—and needed to be, in that part of the country. Just as it was getting dark, the men came back, regularly knocked up, with their clothes torn to rags and half off their backs. They hadn’t caught Brady. I didn’t expect they would—he was in hard condition, and could run like a kangaroo. He got clean out of sight of them in a mile or two after they left us. What astonished me was, that they brought back the black girl, with a bullet through her shoulder, poor thing!