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 penned 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 somehow, and stood with his hand
on Rainbow's mane, when the old horse rose again all right, 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
just as I was aiming at a young fellow with light hair that had ridden
pretty close up, under a myall tree.

Jim and Sir Ferdinand let drive straight at one another the same minute.
They both meant it this time. Sir Ferdinand's hat turned part round on
his head, but poor old Jim drops forward on his face and tears up the
grass with his hands. I knew what that sign meant.

Goring rides straight at Starlight and calls on him to surrender. He had
his rifle on his hip, but