“That’s all right, then,” cheerily remarked Fenno. “I—”
“You’ll shoot Treve, through me!” panted Royce, shoving the collie behind him again; and advancing in hot menace on his detested partner. “It’s bad enough to have—”
He got no further. Eyes abulge, he stared at Fenno.
Joel had caught the rifle deftly in both hands and was hard at work pumping the cartridges from its magazine. In clinking sequence they fell to earth. Three seconds later, he picked up and pocketed the shells and laid the empty and useless gun on the ground. Then he faced the loudly blaspheming Garry.
“I’ll send the rifle back to you by one of the men,” said he. “I’m not givin’ it to you, now; for fear you may have a spare ca’tridge or two in your jeans. I was afraid maybe one of you had packed a revolver, too. That’s why I made sure. Your teeth is drawed, friends. S’pose you traipse off home?”
“Joel!” cried Mack, overjoyed, incredulous. “Joel!”
The old man spun about on him; scowling, shrill with peevish wrath.
“What’ve I always told you about that dog?” he accused. “Didn’t I always say he wa’n’t wuth his salt? You’ve cosseted him an’ you’ve made much of him an’ you’ve sp’iled him. Not that he ever ’mounted to anything, to begin with. An’ now you see what you’ve brang him to. Made a Killer of him! He—”
“I’m going to have the sheriff here, inside of one hour!” the enraged Garry was declaiming, unheeded, at the same time. “And after the Killer is shot by an off’cer of the court, I am going to bring soot agin you for impeding the course of the law and likewise for stealing my gun. Then I’m going to sue you both, in the Dos Hermanos County Court, for the loss of my sheep and—”
“Likewise,” snarled on old Joel Fenno, still haranguing his partner, “this comes of tryin’ to make a dog a c’mpanion instead of a beast of burden, like the Almighty intended him to be. I hope you’re plumb sat’sfied with the passel of trouble you’ve yanked down onto us, an’—”