ws are going to back me up!"

And Carmichael was a mighty man, whose influence was not to be
withstood.

A Duel in the Desert

It was eight o'clock and Monday morning when the romantic rascals were
led away in unromantic bonds. Their arms were bound to their bodies,
their feet lashed to the stirrup-irons; they sat like packs upon quiet
station horses, carefully chosen for the nonce; they were tethered to a
mounted policeman apiece, each with leading-rein buckled to his left
wrist and Government revolver in his right hand. Behind the quartette
rode the officer in command, superbly mounted, watching ever all four
with a third revolver ready cocked. It seemed a small and yet an ample
escort for the two bound men.

But Stingaree was by no means in that state of Napoleonic despair which
his bent back and lowering countenance were intended to convey. He had
not uttered a word since the arrival of the police, whom he had suffered
to lift him on horseback, as he now sat, without raising his morose eyes
once. Howie, on the other hand, had offered a good deal of futile
opposition, cursing his captors as the fit moved him, and once
struggling so insanely in his bonds as to earn a tap from the wrong end
of a revolver and a bloody face for his pains. Stingaree glowered in
deep delight. His mate's part was as well acted as his own; but it was
he who had conceived them both, and expounded them in countless camps
against some such extremity as this. The result was in ideal accordance
with his calculations. The man who gave the trouble was the man to
watch. And Stingaree, chin on chest, was left in peace to evolve a way
of escape.

The chances were all adverse; he had never been less sanguine in his
life. Not that Stingaree had much opinion of the police; he had slipped
through their hands too often; but it was an unfortunate circumstance
that two of the present trio were among those whom he had eluded most
recently, and who therefore would be least likely to give him another
chance. A lightning student of his kind, he based his only hope upon an
accurate estimate of these men, and applied his whole mind to the triple
task. But it was a single task almost from the first; for the policeman
in charge of him was none other than his credulous old friend, Sergeant
Cameron from Clear Corner; and Howie's custodian, a young trooper run
from the same mould as Constable Tyler and many a hundred more, in whom
a thick skull cancelled