Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/157

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MORGAN THE BUSHRANGER
145

the men on each side of me, as it happened. But, cunning to the last, he made M'Pherson and Telford come out with him, one on each side, not above a yard away from him. As he passed by us we couldn't have fired without a good chance of shooting one of the other two. So we let him pass—pretty close too. However, when he'd passed Quinlan, the track turned at an angle, which brought him broadside on; it wasn't to say a very long shot, nor yet a very close one. It was a risk, too, for of course if he had been missed, the first thing he'd have done would have been to have shot M'Pherson and Telford before any one could have stopped him. But Quinlan had a fair show as he thought, and let drive, without bothering about too many things at once. That shot settled the business for good and all. His bullet struck Morgan between the shoulders and passed out near his chin. He fell, mortally wounded. In an instant he was rushed and his revolvers taken from him. He lay helpless; the spine had been touched, and he was writhing in his death agony, as better men had done before from his pistol.

The first thing he said was, 'You might have sent a fellow a challenge.' One of the men called out, 'When did you ever do it, you murdering dog?' He never spoke after that, and lived less than two hours.

The police didn't come up in time to do anything; no doubt they would have been ready to help in preventing his escape. But I was only too glad the thing had ended as it did. The news soon got abroad that this man—who had kept the border stations of two colonies in fear and trembling, so to speak, for years—was lying dead at Peechelbah. Before night there were best part of two hundred people on the place. I can't say exactly how much whisky they drank, but the station supply ran out before dark, and it was no foolish one either. 'All's well that ends well,' they say. We've had nobody since who's been such a 'terror' to settlers and travellers. But I don't want to go through such a time again as the night of Morgan's death.