The Ghost Camp by Rolf Boldrewood

"‘AT that moment, the last I ever expected to see on earth, the black girl uttered a sudden cry. The report of a gun was heard, as a bullet passed between me and Brady, flattening itself against the rock where I had been leaning just before. At the same time four men dashed across the gully and made for him. He looked at me with devilish malignity for a moment, but I suppose, wanting the charge in his gun for his own defence, turned and fled with extraordinary speed towards the forest, the police-for such they were-with a soldier and the informer, firing at him as he went. Their guns were the old-fashioned tower muskets; they were bad shots at best-so the girl and he disappeared in the thick wood, unhurt as far as I could see. I fell on my face, I know, and thanked God before I rose-the God of our fathers, who had answered my prayer and delivered me out of the hand of the "bloody and deceitful man," in the words of the Psalmist. I took my sheep home early, and put them in the paling yard-dog proof it was-and needed to be, in that part of the country. Just as it was getting dark, the men came back, regularly knocked up, with their clothes torn to rags and half off their backs. They hadn't caught Brady. I didn't expect they would-he was in hard condition, and could run like a kangaroo. He got clean out of sight of them in a mile or two after they left us. What astonished me was, that they brought back the black girl, with a bullet through her shoulder, poor thing!

"‘"I suppose that was a mistake," said I, "you didn't fire at the poor thing, surely?"