Australian Tales - Setis

ullet ye'd murther me wid, that's a fact. I'm ruined outright, like a frostbitten
murphy, so I am. But maybe ye'll be so ginerous as to give me a
fig of tobaky, ye'rve got plenty inside yer swag. Do if you plaze honey!
jist one fig, to keep me from starving intirely.”
“Not enough to choke a cockatoo,” roared the thief. “Be smart, I tell
you again: the troopers are on my track.”
“Are they? Shure then I'll make haste, for fear they'd catch you,” said
Mick, apparently working hard to make the straps meet round the bulky
bundle, which having done, he handed it up to the horseman, with
difficulty, remarking, as he did so, that “he feared it was too big for him
to carry convaniently.”
“Never you mind that,” said the bushranger, surlily, as he began to
strap the bundle before him, while Micky walked up to a stringy bark
sapling, and rubbed his back against it, like a scabby sheep.
“Misther What's-yer-name,” whined Mick. “Aisy a bit afore you fasten
the saddle straps. For pity's sake be afther giving me the box o' pills out
of me swag, and I'll be iverlastingly obliged to yez; bekase don't you see
I'm dying wid the itch; and nothing but mint pills will aise me.”
“The what?” roared the ruffian, at the same time throwing the bundle
off his saddle, as if it were scalding hot. “What; you've got that horrible
nuisance, have you? Confound you! what did you put your mangy swag
inside mine for? Do you want to infect me and all my mates too, and ruin
my horse into the bargain, eh? Bad manners to you!”
“Sorra a bit iv it sir,” cried Mick. “I wouldn't give such an ugly plague
to ‘ould scratch’ himself, not if I could help it; that would be a rale
unjentlemanly trick, soh. You towld me to give ye me swag, sir, and I've
give it yez, every bit.”
“Hur you dirty ragamuffin; I've a great mind to blow your brains out, if
you've got any, for spoiling all my traps, with your confounded bundle of
filth. I'll shoot you as dead as — — ”
“Och musha! Good gentleman don't do that,” roared Micky. “Take me
swag althgether, but spare me brains.”
“Take your swag, eh!” sneered the thief. “I wouldn't touch it with a
shovel, if it were full of bank notes, nor my own traps neither, now they
have been bundled up with your leprous kit. They'll want fumigating
with a barrowful of brimstone before any body could touch them, but a
dirty scavenger like yourself. Why didn't you tell me you'd got the
plague? Confound you!”
“Shure an didn't I tell you so plain enough, sir, when I axed yez to give
me the box iv pills out ov me swag?”
“Bah! For threepence I'd give you a barrel of pills,” growled the
ruffian, as he gathered up his reins, and held a revolver to Micky's head.
“Don't let me catch you again, mind that.”
“Faith ye'll not catch me again, if I can any how rin away from you,”