Copper Streak Trail | Page 3

no wheel marks as I come along."
"Fetch 'em from Silverbell. We got a sort of wagon track through the hills. Closer than Cobre. Some wagon road in the rough places! Snakes thick on the east side; but they don't never get over here. Break their backs comin' through the gap. Yes, sir!"
"Then I'll just june along in the cool of the evenin'," observed Pete, ladling out a second helping of jerked venison. "I can follow your wagon tracks into town. I ain't never been to Silverbell. Was afraid I might miss it in the dark. How far is it? About twenty mile, I reckon?"
"Just about. Shucks! I was in hopes you'd stay overnight with us. Bill and me, we ain't seen no one since Columbus crossed the Delaware in fourteen-ninety-two. Can't ye, now?" urged the tall man coaxingly. "We'll pitch horseshoes--play cards if you want to; only Bill and me's pretty well burnt out at cards. Fox and geese too--ever play fox and geese? We got a dandy fox-and-goose board--but Bill, he natcherly can't play. He's from California, Bill is."
"Aw, shut up on that!" growled Bill.
"Sorry," said Pete, "I'm pushed. Got to go on to-night. Want to take that train at seven-thirty in the morning, and a small sleep for myself before that. Maybe I'll stop over as I come back, though. Fine feed you got here. Makes a jim-darter of a horse camp."
"Yes, 'tis. We aim to keep the cattle shoved off so we can save the grass for the saddle ponies."
"Must have quite a bunch?"
"'Bout two hundred. Well, sorry you can't stay with us. We was fixin' to round up what cows had drifted in and give 'em a push back to the main range this afternoon. But they'll keep. We'll stick round camp; and you stay as late as you can, stranger, and we'll stir up something. I'll tell you what, Bill--we'll pull off that shootin' match you was blowin' about." The tall man favored Johnson with a confidential wink. "Bill, he allows he can shoot right peart. Bill's from California."
Bill, the short man, produced a gray-and-yellow tobacco sack and extracted a greasy ten-dollar greenback, which he placed on the box table at Johnson's elbow.
"Cover that, durn you! You hold stakes, stranger. I'll show him California. Humph! Dam' wall-eyed Tejano!"
"I'm a Texan myself," twinkled Johnson.
"What if you are? You ain't wall-eyed, be you? And you ain't been makin' no cracks at California--not to me. But this here Jim--look at the white-eyed, tow-headed grinnin' scoundrel, will you?--Say, are you goin' to cover that X or are you goin' to crawfish?"
"Back down? You peevish little sawed-off runt!" yelped Jim. "I been lettin' you shoot off your head so's you'll be good and sore afterward. I always wanted a piece of paper money any way--for a keepsake. You wait!"
He went into the cabin and returned with a tarnished gold piece and a box of forty-five cartridges.
"Here, stakeholder!" he said to Johnson.
Then, to Bill: "Now, then, old Californy--you been all swelled-up and stumping me for quite some time. Show us what you got!"
It was an uncanny exhibition of skill that followed. These men knew how to handle a sixshooter. They began with tin cans at ten yards, thirty, fifty--and hit them. They shot at rolling cans, and hit them; at high-thrown cans, and hit them; at cards nailed to hitching-posts; then at the pips of cards. Neither man could boast of any advantage. The few and hairbreadth misses of the card pips, the few blanks at the longer ranges, fairly offset each other. The California man took a slightly crouching attitude, his knees a little bent; held his gun at his knee; raising an extended and rigid arm to fire. The Texan stood erect, almost on tiptoe, bareheaded; he swung his gun ear-high above his shoulder, looking at his mark alone, and fired as the gun flashed down. The little California man made the cleaner score at the very long shots and in clipping the pips of the playing cards; the Texan had a shade the better at the flying targets, his bullets ranging full-center where the other barely grazed the cans.
"I don't see but what I'll have to keep this money. You've shot away all the cartridges in your belts and most of the box, and it hasn't got you anywheres," observed Pete Johnson pensively. "Better let your guns cool off. You boys can't beat each other shooting. You do right well, too, both of you. If you'd only started at it when you was young, I reckon you'd both have been what you might call plumb good shots now."
He shook his head sadly and suppressed a sigh.
"Wait!" advised the Texan, and turned to confront his partner. "You make out quite tol'lable with a gun, Billiam," he conceded. "I got