Page:The Gully of Bluemansdyke.djvu/93

 Rh can see on the back of my hand here where the bullet clipped me. He tried again in '76, at Port Philip, but I got the drop on him and wounded him badly. He knifed me in '79 though, in a bar at Adelaide, and that made our account about level. He's loafing round again now, and he'll let daylight into me—unless—unless by some extraordinary chance some one does as much for him." And Maloney gave me a very ugly smile.

"I don't complain of him so much," he continued. "Looking at it in his way, no doubt it is a sort of family matter that can hardly be neglected. It's the Government that fetches me. When I think of what I've done for this country, and then of what this country has done for me, it makes me fairly wild—clean drives me off my head. There's no gratitude nor common decency left, Doctor!"

He brooded over his wrongs for a few minutes, and then proceeded to lay them before me in detail.

"Here's nine men," he said, "they've been murdering and killing for a matter of three years, and maybe a life a week wouldn't more than average the work that they've done. The Government