"No more should I!" said a harsh voice behind the bushranger. "Hands up and empty, Stingaree, or you're the next dead man in this little Colony!"
Quick as thought Stingaree stepped in front of the tied Victorian. But his hands were up, and his eye-glass dangling on its string.
"Oh, you don't catch me kill two birds," rasped the newcomer's voice, "though I'm not sure which of you would be least loss!"
Stingaree stood aside once more, and waved his hands without lowering them, bowing from his captor to his captive as he did so.
"Superintendent Cairns, of New South Wales--Inspector Kilbride, of Victoria," said he. "You two men will be glad to know each other."
The New South Welshman drawled out a dry expression of his own satisfaction. His was a strange and striking personality. Dark as a mulatto, and round-shouldered to the extent of some distinct deformity, he carried his eyes high under the lids, and shot his piercing glance from under the penthouse of a beetling brow; a lipless mouth was pursed in such a fashion as to shorten the upper lip and exaggerate an already powerful chin; and this stooping and intent carriage was no less suggestive of the human sleuth-hound than were the veiled vigilance and dogged determination of the lowered face. Such was the man who had succeeded where Kilbride had failed--succeeded at the most humiliating moment of that most ignominious failure--and who came unwarrantably from the wrong side of the Murray. The Victorian stood in his bonds and favored his rival with such a glare as he had not levelled at Stingaree himself. But not a syllable did Kilbride vouchsafe. And the Superintendent was fully occupied with his prisoner.
"'Little crooked Cairns,' am I? There are those that look a jolly sight smaller, and'll have a worse hump than mine for the rest of their born days! Come nearer and turn your back."
And the revolver was withdrawn from its carrier on the stolen constabulary belt. The bushranger was then searched for other weapons; then marched into the bush at the pistol's point, and brought back handcuffed to the Superintendent's bridle.
"That's the way you'll come marching home, my boy; and one of us on horseback each side; don't trust _you_ in a saddle on a dark night!"