Red Saunders | Page 3

missing. Well, if it had been the last act, I'd have had to laugh.
"Couldn't find 'em nohow," says he; "hunted high and low, jick, Jack, and the game--Just comes to my mind now that I had 'em rolled up and was sleeping on 'em. I don't like to go around this way'--I feel as if I was two men, and one of 'em hardly respectable."
"Did you bring a gun with you?"
He gave me another stare. "Why, pardner, you must think I have got a light and frivolous disposition," says he, and with that he heaves up the great-grand-uncle of all the six-shooters I ever did see. It made my forty-five-long look like something for a kid to cut its teeth on. "That's the best gun in this country," he went on.
"Looks as if it might be," says I. "Has the foundry that cast it gone out of business? I'd like to have one like it, if it's as dangerous as it looks."
"When I have any trouble with a man," says he, "I don't want to go pecking at him with a putty-blower, just irritating him, and giving him a little skin complaint here and there; I want something that'll touch his conscience."
He had it, for a broadside from that battery would scatter an elephant over a township.
We loped along quiet and easy until sun-up. The Grindstone Buttes lay about a mile ahead of us. Looking back, we saw the Injuns coming over a rise of ground 'way in the distance.
"Now," says my friend, "I know a short cut through those hills that'll bring us out at Johnson's. They've got enough punchers there to do the United States army up--starched and blued. Shall we take it?"
"Sure!" says I. "I'm only wandering around this part of the country because this part of the country is here--if it was anywheres else I'd be just as glad."
So in we went. It was the steepest and narrowest kind of a canon, looking as if it had been cut out of the rock with one crack of the axe. I was just thinking: "Gee whiz! but this would be a poor place to get snagged in," when bang! says a rifle right in front of us, and m-e-arr! goes the bullet over our heads.
We were off them horses and behind a, couple of chunks of rock sooner than we hoped for, and that's saying a good deal.
"Cussed poor shot, whoever he is," says my friend. "Some Injun holding us here till the rest come up, I presume."
"That's about the size of it--and I'd like to make you a bet that he does it, too, if I thought I'd have a chance to collect."
"Oh, you can't always tell--you might lose your money," says he, kind of thoughtful.
"I wouldn't mind that half as much as winning," says I. "But on the square, do you think we can get out? I'll jump him with you if you say so, although I ain't got what you might call a passion for suicide."
"Now you hold on a bit," says he. "I don't know but what we'd have done better to stick to the horses, and run for it, but it's too late to think of that. Jumping him is all foolishness; he'd sit behind his little rock and pump lead into us till we wouldn't float in brine--and we can't back out now."
He talked so calm it made me kind of mad. "Well," says I, "in that case, let's play 'Simon says thumbs up' till the rest of the crowd comes."
"There you go!" says he. "Just like all young fellers--gettin' hosstyle right away if you don't fall in with their plans. Now, Sonny, you keep your temper, and watch me play cushion carroms with our friend there."
"Meaning how?"
"You see that block of stone just this side of him with the square face towards us? Well, he's only covered in front, and I'm a-going to shoot against that face and ketch him on the glance."
"Great, if you could work it!" says I. "But Lord!"
"Well, watch!" says he. Then he squinched down behind his cover, so as not to give the Injun an opening, trained his cannon and pulled the trigger. The old gun opened her mouth and roared like an earthquake, but I didn't see any dead Injun. Then twice more she spit fire, and still there weren't any desirable corpses to be had.
"Say, pardner," says I, "you wouldn't make many cigars at this game!"
"Now, don't you get oneasy," says he. "Just watch!"
"_Biff_!" says the old gun, and this time, sure enough, the Injun was knocked clear of the rock. I felt all along that he wouldn't be much of a comfort to his friends afterwards, if that gun did land on him.
Still, he wasn't so awful dead, for as we jumped