`He's worth two dead 'uns yet,' said father, who had his hand on his pulse.
`Hold his head up one of you while I go for the brandy.
How did he get hit, Warrigal?'

`That ---- Sergeant Goring,' said the boy, a slight, active-looking chap,
about sixteen, that looked as if he could jump into a gum tree and back again,
and I believe he could. `Sergeant Goring, he very near grab us at Dilligah.
We got a lot of old Jobson's cattle when he came on us. He jump off his horse
when he see he couldn't catch us, and very near drop Starlight.
My word, he very nearly fall off -- just like that' (here he imitated a man
reeling in his saddle); `but the old horse stop steady with him, my word,
till he come to. Then the sergeant fire at him again; hit him in the shoulder
with his pistol. Then Starlight come to his senses, and we clear.
My word, he couldn't see the way the old horse went. Ha, ha!' --
here the young devil laughed till the trees and rocks rang again.
`Gallop different ways, too, and met at the old needle-rock.
But they was miles away then.'

Before the wild boy had come to the end of his story
the wounded man had proved that it was only a dead faint,
as the women call it, not the real thing. And after he had tasted
a pannikin full of brandy and water, which father brought him,
he sat up and looked like a living man once more.

`Better have a look at my shoulder,' he said. `That ---- fellow shot
like a prize-winner at Wimbledon. I've had a squeak for it.'

`Puts me in mind of our old poaching rows,' said father, while he carefully
cut the shirt off, that was stiffened with blood and showed where the bullet
had passed through the muscle, narrowly missing the bone of the joint.