He had hit it off well this time, blast him! We couldn’t make back on account of the creek, and we had double our number to fight, and good men, too, before we could break through, if we could do that.

Our time was come if we hadn’t the devil’s own luck; but we had come out of as tight a place before, and might do it again.

When they were within fifty yards Sir Ferdinand calls out, “Surrender! It’s no use, men,” says he; “I don’t want to shoot you down, but you must see you’re outnumbered. There’s no disgrace in yielding now.”

“Come on!” says Starlight; “don’t waste your breath! There’s no man here will be taken alive.”

With that, Goring lets drive and sends a bullet that close by my head I put my hand up to feel the place. All the rest bangs away, black tracker and all. I didn’t see Sir Ferdinand’s pistol smoke. He and Starlight seemed to wait. Then Jim and I fires steady. One trooper drops badly hit, and my man’s horse fell like a log and pinned his rider under him, which was pretty nigh as good.

“Steady does it,” says Starlight, and he makes a snap shot at the tracker, and breaks his right arm.

‘Three men spoiled,” says he; “one more to the good and we may charge.”

Just as he said this the trooper that was underneath the dead horse crawls from under him, the off side, and rests his rifle on his wither. Starlight had just mounted when every rifle and pistol in the two parties was fired at one volley. We had drawn closer to one another, and no one seemed to think of cover.

Rainbow rears up, gives one spring, and falls backward with a crash. I thought Starlight was crushed underneath him, shot through the neck and flank as he was, but he saved himself some how, and stood with his hand on Rainbow’s mane, when the old horse rose again allright, head and tail well up, and as steady as a rock. The blood was pouring out of his neck, but he didn’t seem to care two straws about it. You could see his nostril spread out and his eye looking twice as big and fiery.

Starlight rests his rifle a minute on the old horse’s shoulder, and the man that had fired the shot fell over with a kick. Something hits me in the ribs like a stone, and another on the right arm, which drops down as I was aiming at a young fellow with light hair that had ridden pretty close up, under a myall tree.