“Two dollars,” broke in Jack, who was the circulating agency of the Weekly Planet.
“Thar’s a saw-buck,” quoth Rattlesnake, bringing up a ten-dollar goldpiece and tossing it to Jack. “Put down Rattlesnake Sanders for five years.” Then, as he buried a spur in his pony’s flank and fled like an arrow: “I’ll send th’ address as soon as I settle down.”
When Rattlesnake Sanders injured Mr. Kelly’s arm Mr. Masterson was at the other end of town. It was ten minutes before he heard of the gay doings of Rattlesnake. When word reached him he threw a saddle onto a pony and started in pursuit. Mr. Masterson also halted at the open door of the Weekly Planet, only he was after information, not apparel.
“Did you see a cowboy without coat or hat go by?” asked Mr. Masterson, on the bare chance that the phenomenon had caught the eye of Higginson Peabody.
“I just gave one my coat and hat,” replied Higginson Peabody.
“It was Rattlesnake Sanders,” said Mr. Masterson, settling himself in his stirrups for a run. “He’s creased Kelly. Which way did he go?”
Before Higginson Peabody could answer, Jack took reply from his mouth.
“I’ll show you, Mr. Masterson,” observed the eager Jack, pointing westward towards the Cimarron Crossing. “He lined out in that direction. An’ say, he was simply hittin’ the high places!”
Now, be it known that Rattlesnake had fled away to the north and east, as though heading for Hays—a course the reverse of that given by Jack. The intervention, and the brisk falsehoods so cheerfully fulminated, took away the breath of Higginson Peabody. Before he regained it Mr. Masterson was a mile on his way to the Cimarron Crossing.
“How could you lie like that?” demanded Higginson Peabody, regarding Jack with wondering horror; “how could you lie like that, and you but fourteen! That Rattlesnake man went east, not west; and Mr. Masterson is an officer of the law!”