e
kid--you, if you want to be exact, damn you, now you've come to see me
die--that man went back to the--the place where he stole the kid and
where he met--your father."

Again he sought to raise his head as he uttered the words in short,
sharp tones, his face growing wet and ghastly under the influence of his
pain and his hatred. Tony, watching him, said nothing; the man was
either mad or lying, and whichever it was, the best thing to do was to
keep quiet and say nothing.

"He came back for fresh mischief, and I--there, you know now--I met
him," he shouted; and Tony, keeping still, stood looking at him calmly.
"I waited for him out on the run," he went on, beginning to speak in
jerky spasms of words, as though he needed to rest every few seconds if
he would keep his energy enough in hand to last him till he finished his
story. "He had been rounding up some cattle, and had a stock-whip with
him. I had one, too, a beauty, with a sixteen-foot green-hide thong. I
knew him as soon as I saw him half a mile away. I skulked in the scrub
as he came up--just behind a clump of wattle. To fool him I rode out
and past him; he turned after me, and I wheeled."

[Illustration: "THROUGH THE BUSH IT WENT, RACING LIKE MAD." [_Page 268._]

The bright eyes glittered as they watched Tony's face.

"You're a fly young chap," he went on, "but you're not fly enough to
guess what's coming. A couple of miles from where we were a track ran
through a thickly timbered part of the run. It was a winding track, and
not too wide. At one of the narrowest bits, just in the middle of a
curve, an old dead gum had stood for years. I had gone over that track
just an hour or so before, and I saw where that big gum had
fallen--lying right up the track. It was a red gum, tough, long-limbed,
and sun-dried. When it fell it had splintered lumps off the limbs,
making them sharp at the ends, which were pointing up the track like the
prongs of a great jagged toasting-fork. Ha, sonny, what a throw-in for
me! Here was a game worth playing. I rode at the man I hated, loosening
my stock-whip, and as I came near him, I turned aside and sent out the
lash--so as not to touch him. The crack of it sounded in his ears and in
his horse's as well, and the beast began to plunge. Here was my chance,
and I took it. As the horse reared and plunged, I waited till it was
facing away from me, and then sent the lash fair on to its flanks. It
brought a lump out of the brute, for the