a moment to find himself in the jungle thickets.
He came to his senses not a second too soon. Coming toward him through the thicket, hurrying like gaunt black specters of silence, came a scattered line of blackfellows spaced from one another like skirmishers.
With a yell of surprise, Sam dodged a spear as one of the black phantoms rushed at him and hurled a death shaft. A second later that aborigine sprawled on his face, one of Sam's rifle bullets through his bony chest.
Sam found himself facing three more—one of whom carried a limp, unconscious bundle in his arms. A white woman! Of course it had to be Claire. Sam forgot completely that there had been two others in that moment of flying spear and spouting lead.
Down went two of the blacks. And on both sides others yelled, probably thinking they had been trapped by more police. They fled at top speed, paying no attention to Sam, fortunately.
The gaunt Kimberley now flung aside the girl's body, and came for Sam with waddy swinging. Sam's rifle clicked—a dud cartridge, or else it had gone empty before he realized!
The stone waddy whished sidewise at his knees—the cunning stroke which cripples and fells an enemy, leaving him an easy victim for further attack.
Sam shouted, as he snatched desperately at his revolver. He leapt high, as a schoolgirl leaps over a skipping rope. And the waddy knocked away one of his heels, but did not touch flesh or bone!
As he alighted, and before the terrible club could be swung a second time, Sam shot once, twice, pointblank into the torso of the black. The aborigine bellowed, folded up and sprawled, twitching. It ceased. He was dead. Crouching, expecting more enemies, Sam stared about in the thicket. Nothing.
He was alone save for the girl he had rescued, there on the ground. She moved as he ran to her side, and lifted her face.
It was the coquette, the widow Elinor Mathes!
"Sam! Sam!" she cried, her voice breaking with incredulity and gladness. "Oh, are you real? That—that black man—"
She reached up both arms, sobbing as she clasped them tightly about the neck of the astounded Sam Varney, who ejaculated something suspiciously like a bitter curse.
"Where is Claire? Have these men got her?" He gestured in the direction the blacks had vanished.
"Oh no. Another bunch, I think," she sobbed. "Oh, carry me, Sam. I—I don't think I could possibly walk!"
Cursing inwardly, unable to desert this girl in distress as he wanted with all his heart to do, Sam picked her up roughly in his arms and began stalking back toward the fence.
Chapter XI
The Last Bushranger.
A few minutes ended that. Sam still was tired, and ferocious at the turn of fortune which had thrown this woman into his arms—instead of Claire Smith. There came a distant sound of firing, at right angles from his course back to the fence! That could mean only one thing—a rescue party of police or surveyors!
Instantly Sam put down his burden. In spite of Elinor's wailing protest, he made her use her own feet. His own strength and ability might be
