Father put on one of his old poacher dodges that he had borrowed from the lapwing in his own country, that he used to tell us about when we were boys (our wild duck’ll do just the same), and made himself out a deal worse than he was. Father could run a bit, too; he’d been fast for a mile when he was young, and though he was old now he never carried no flesh to signify, and was as hard as nails. So what with knowing the ground, and they being flat-country men, he kept just out of pistol-shot, and yet showed enough to keep ‘em filled up with the notion that they’d run him down after a bit.

They fired a shot every now and then, thinking a chance one might wing him, but this only let Moran and Daly see that someone was after dad, and that the hunt was coming their way.

They held steady where they had been told to stop, and looked out for the men they’d been warned of by father. As he got near this place he kept lettin’ ‘em git a bit nearer and nearer to him, so as they’d follow him up just where he wanted. It gave them more chance of hitting him, but he didn’t care about that, now his blood was up—not he. All he wanted was to get them. Dad was the coolest old cove, when shooting was going on, ever I see. You’d think he minded bullets no more than bottle-corks.

Well, he goes stumbling and dragging himself like up the gully, and they, cocksure of getting him, closing up and shooting quicker and quicker, when just as he jumps down the Black Gully steps a bullet did hit him in the shoulder under the right arm, and staggers him in good earnest. He’d just time to cut down the bank and turn to the left along the creek channel, throwing himself down on his face among the bushes, when the whole four of ‘em jumps down the bank after him.

“Stand!” says Moran, and they looked up and saw him and Daly covering them with their revolvers. Before they’d time to draw, two of ‘em rolls over as dead as door-nails.

The other two were dumbfounded and knocked all of a heap by suddenly finding themselves face to face with the very men they’d been hunting after for weeks and weeks. They held up their pistols, but they didn’t seem to have much notion of using them—particularly when they found father had rounded on ‘em, too, and was standing a bit away on the side looking very ugly and with his revolver held straight at ‘em.

“Give in! Put down your irons,” says Moran, “or by --, we’ll drop ye where ye where ye stand.”

“Come on,” says one, and I think he intended to make a fight for it.