The Westerners

  XXXII

  IN WHICH THERE IS SOME SHOOTING

  Billy sat in a chair and boiled. He did not calm down until afterdaylight, and then he found that his depression had vanished. He wasfull of vigor. He went out and looked over the property verycarefully. The entire lay-out, he found, had weighed on his spirits,and this last ungrateful episode had made him sick of the wholemiserable business. He ought never to be tied down. He could see hismistake clearly enough now. If he was going to stick to gold hunting,it ought to be as a prospector, not as a miner. A prospector enjoyedthe delight of new country, of wilderness life, of the chase, and then,when civilization came too near, he could sell his claims to the minerand move on to a virgin country. A miner, on the other hand, had tosettle down in one place and attend to all manner of vexatious details.Billy felt a great impatience to shake himself free. With the thoughtcame a wave of anger against the men of the town. After all, what hadhe to gain by staying? This outfit was a fizzle; nothing could be donewith it in the future. He might save something of the wreck bygrubbing about in the debris, but grubbing was exactly what he wantedto get away from.

  He looked over the works again. He was astonished to find how littleof it he cared for personally. There remained not much more than theWesterner's outfit, when it was winnowed--four good horses, thebuckboard, his saddle, clothes, his weapons, and the beautiful trottinghorse. Billy could not let that go. The camp outfit they could haveand welcome. He kicked the rubber stamper into space, scatteringpotential literature about the landscape. Many things he hesitatedover, but finally discarded. The heap was not very large when all wastold.

  He began to experiment with the buckboard. Billy was a master of thecelebrated diamond hitch. After an hour's earnest work, he drew backtriumphantly to observe to himself that all he wished to take with himwas securely packed on the vehicle. Then he coupled in his grays, andled out the beautiful trotting horse. He was glad that he had latelypaid the English groom his wages; which individual he rememberedseeing, the night before, dead drunk in a corner. Billy made himselfsome coffee in the empty cookee's shack, and was ready to start.

  He did not know exactly where he would go; that was a matter of detail,but somewhere West in all probability--somewhere in Wyoming, where JimBuckley was hidden up in the mountains, living a sane sort of a life,removed from the corroding influences of civilization. He did notrealize that in this impatient shaking off of responsibility, he waslittle better than a moral coward. Even Billy's worst enemies wouldhave denied the justice of that epithet.

  He climbed in, deliberately unwound the reins from the long brakehandle, clucked to the horses, and took his way, whistling, down thenarrow trail. The beautiful trotting horse followed gingerly, tossinghis head. At the entrance to town, Billy's whistling suddenly ceased.The street was quite bare and silent. Not even from the Little Nuggetsaloon or the new dance hall came the faintest sound of humanoccupancy. A tenderfoot might have argued that this was indicative ofdeep sleep after last night's festivities, but Billy knew better. Atseven o'clock in the morning, after excitement such as that of a fewhours before, the normal ensuing pow-wow would still be ragingunabated. He reached under the seat for his Winchester, the new 40-82model of his prosperous days, and laid it softly across his lap, andcaught the end of the long lash in his whip hand. Then he resumed histune exactly where it had been broken off, looking neither to right norleft, and jogging along without the slightest appearance of haste oruneasiness. No one could have called Billy Knapp a coward at thatmoment.

  Near the first cabin the whistling broke off again. A little figurestumbled out into the deserted street, weeping and afraid. Billypulled up. It was the Kid.

  "They're goin' to shoot you," he sobbed, "from behind the LittleNugget, without givin' you a chanst! I had to tell you, an' they'llmost kill me!" he wailed. Billy's eyes began to sparkle. The Kidtried to hold within the other's reach his little 22 calibre rifle, hismost precious possession. "Here, take this!" he begged.

  Billy laughed outright, a generous, hearty laugh with just a shade ofsomething serious in it. "Thank ye," said he, "I got one. And let metell ye right yere, you Kid. Yore a white man, you are, and yore jestabout the only white man in the place." He cast his eyes about him inthe buckboard at his feet. "Yere ye be," he said, tugging at a pair ofhuge silver-ornamented Mexican spurs and leaning over to give them tothe boy; "jest remember me by them thar; they has my name in 'em; and,look yere," he went on with a sudden inspiration, "you-all gets upgulch to my camp and takes what grub you finds and lies low until yo'paw an' th' rest gits over bein' mad. I don't know but what they_does_ kill you, if you shows up afore that." And he laughed again tosee the boy's face brighten at this prospect of escaping the immediatewrath to follow.

  The little scene had been enacted in the middle of the silent street,so silent and so empty that the principal actors in it experienced anuncomfortable emotion of publicity, perhaps a little like that of aninexperienced speaker before the glare of footlights. The Kid,followed friskily by Peter, scuttled up the gulch, Billy stood up inhis buckboard and faced the inscrutable row of houses.

  "Yo' damn coyotes!" he yelled, "thar goes the only _man_ in the wholeoutfit. Shoot! yo' Siwashes, shoot!" and he brought his long whip likea figure 8 across the flanks of all four horses at once.

  _Bang!_ reverberated a shot between the hills, and a bullet splashedwhite against the brake bar.

  Billy dropped the reins to the floor of the buckboard, and planted hisfoot on them. He steadied his knee against the seat, and threw downand back the lever of his Winchester for a shot. The beautifultrotting horse was pulling back in an ecstasy of terror at the end ofhis long lariat, shaking his head and planting his forefeet. Billycursed savagely, but jerked loose the knot, and the beautiful trottinghorse, with a final snort of terror, turned tail and disappeared in thedirection of the mine.

  _Bang! Bang! Bang!_ went other shots from behind puffs of whitesmoke. The hills caught up the sound and rolled it back, and then backagain, until it was quite impossible to count the discharges.

  There were perhaps a half-dozen men with rifles and a dozen or so withsix-shooters, all pumping away at it as fast as they could. Thebuckboard was struck many times. One horse was hit, but onlyslightly--not enough to interfere with, but rather to encourage hisspeed. Billy fastened his eyes on the spot whence the first bullet hadsped. Suddenly he threw his rifle to his shoulder.

  _Crack!_ it spoke, strangely flat out there in the open against thefuller reports of the other pieces.

  The bullets which undershot kicked up little puffs of dust, likegrasshoppers jumping, while those that passed above, ricochettedfinally from rocks and went singing away into the distance. It was awonder, with so large a mark, that neither the man nor the horses werehit. It must be remembered, however, that the marksmen were more orless drunk, and that Billy's speed was by now something tremendous.

  _Crack!_ went his Winchester again.

  At the end of the straight road was, as has perhaps been mentioned, aturn of considerable sharpness, flanked by bold cliff-like rocks. Inthe best of circumstances, this bit of road requires careful driving.With a runaway four and a light buckboard, a smash up was inevitable.The hidden assailants and spectators of the strange duel realized thissuddenly. In the interest of the approaching catastrophe, thefusillade ceased as abruptly as it had begun. Billy maintained hisfirst attitude, one knee on the seat, the other foot braced against thefloor, keenly expectant. The silence became breathless, and one or twomen leaned forward the better to see.

  "_Crack!_" spoke Billy's rifle for the third time. The man who hadfired the first shot pitched suddenly forward from behind hissheltering corner, and lay still.

  With one swift motion the scout dropped his Winchester in the seat,grasped the four reins, and threw his enormous weight against the bits.The grays had been ranch-bred. They bunched their feet, hunched theirbacks, and in three heavy buck jumps had slowed down f
rom a breakneckrun to a lumbering gallop. Billy Knapp gave vent to the wild shrillwar cry of his foster parents, the Oglallah Sioux, and jogged calmlyout of sight around the bend of the road.

  A great crowd pressed about Tony Houston, prone on the ground. Theydiscovered that the ball had passed through the point of the shoulder,not a dangerous place in itself, but resulting in a serious woundbecause of the smashing power of the express rifle.

  "Damn fine shooting!" they said, looking at each other with admiration."_Damn_ fine."

  They began to feel a little more kindly toward Billy on account of thisevidence of his skill. They set about bandaging the wounded man.