“Bob,” said he to Mr. Wright, “I can’t be sure at that range with my gun. It’s got buckhorn sights—coarse enough to drag a dog through ’em. Where’s that closed-sight gun you brought out last week, the one with the peep sight in the grip?”
“It’s here,” returned Mr. Wright, “but there’s no cartridges nearer than the store.”
“That’s all right,” said Mr. Masterson. “You boys cover me, and I’ll make a dash for the store. I want to see how they’re getting on over there, at that.”
Mr. Masterson went through one of the eighteen-inch openings. The distant Indians saw him, but appeared indifferent. There was a tall wall of mud between the store and Mr. Hanrahan’s saloon. There was a gate, but that had been closed and locked by Baldy Smith. Mr. Masterson’s plan was to crawl under the gate, being invited by an open space of at least a foot. It was better than climbing; were he to do the latter some far-off lucky savage might manage a cock-shot of him as he went over the top.
As Mr. Masterson stooped to dive beneath the gate, he shouted loudly to those in the store. He had no desire to be mowed down by his friends, upon a notion that he was some enterprising Indian, piercing their defences. At Mr. Masterson’s shout, a wounded Indian, who was lying low in a clump of weeds, sat up and with the utmost good will pumped three bullets at him from a Spencer seven-shooter. The bullets chucked into a pile of chips, heaped up where the cook was wont to chop his fire wood. They buried the crawling Mr. Masterson beneath a shower of bark and chips and splinters, but did no harm.
Mr. Masterson’s feelings were ruffled by the shower of chips. On reaching the store, his first care was to borrow a rifle, poke a hole in the mud wall and quiet that uneasy personage in weedy ambuscade.
“I don’t want him whanging away at me on my return,” explained Mr. Masterson.
There were five in the store. Young Thurston had been shot through the lungs. His days were down to minutes; parched with the death-fever, he lay calling for water.
There was no well in the store as in the forethoughtful Mr. Hanrahan’s saloon. The store pump was fifty yards away in the stark, undefended open.
“I reckon now,” said Daddy Keeler, “I’ll go fetch a bucketful. I’m the gent to go, because my eyes are too old and dim to do anything at six hundred yards. I’d just waste cartridges.”