BEDDED IN THE SOFT EARTH UNDERNEATH
LAY THE SLIM BUCKSKIN SACKS.
[Page 159.]
"Here"—Mac handed me his carbine—"you stay with the yellow temptation. From now on we'll have to keep a close eye on this stuff, and likewise have our guns handy. I'll make those fellows pack up and bring the horses here. Then we'll load this and pull for Walsh."
His first move was to saddle his black horse and my dun. These he led to the fire, and thereafter stood a little to one side, placidly consuming a cigarette while the other two packed the camp-outfit and saddled their own mounts. Then they trailed across the flat toward me, MacRae blandly bringing up the rear. He wasn't taking any chances.
Half an hour later, with the sacks of gold securely lashed on the aparejos of the pack-horse, we climbed out of Writing-Stone bottom and swung away over the silent tablelands.
With Writing-on-the-Stone scarcely three miles behind, the long-abandoned burrow of a badger betrayed us into the hands of the enemy. (What a power for thwarting the plans of men little things sometimes exercise!) We had contrived that Gregory should lead the pack-horse, which gave MacRae and me both hands to use in case of a hostile demonstration; that there would be such, neither of us doubted from the moment those two laid eyes on the buckskin sacks. The sidelong, covetous glance that passed between them bespoke what was in their minds. And from that time on the four of us were like so many open-headed casks of powder sitting by a fire; sooner or later a spark would bring the explosion. We had them at a disadvantage trotting across the level upland, Gregory in the lead and Hicks sandwiched between Mac and myself—until MacRae's horse planted his foreleg to the knee in an old badger-hole hidden under a rank accumulation of grass. The black pitched forward so suddenly that Mac had no time to swing clear, and as he went down under the horse Gregory's agile brain grasped the opportunity of the situation, and his gun flashed out of its scabbard.
My hand flew to mine as I jerked the dun up short, but I wasn't fast enough—and Hicks was too close. It was a trilogy of gun-drawing. Gregory drew his and fired at MacRae with the devilish quickness of a striking rattler; I drew with intent to get Mr. Gregory; and Hicks drew his and slapped me over the head with it, even as my finger curled on the trigger. My gun went off, I know—afterward I had a dim recollection of a faint report—but whether the bullet went whistling into the blue above or buried itself in the broad bosom of the Territory, I can't say. Things ceased to happen, right then and there, so far as I was concerned. And I haven't satisfied myself yet why Hicks struck instead of shooting; unless he had learned the frontier lesson that a bullet in a vital spot doesn't always incapacitate a man for deadly gun-play, while a hard rap on the head invariably does. It wasn't any scruple of mercy, for Hicks was as cold-blooded a brute as ever glanced down a gun-barrel.
When my powers of sight and speech and hearing returned, MacRae stood over me, nowise harmed. The black horse lay where he had fallen. I sat up and glanced about, thankful that I was still in the flesh, but in a savage mood for all that. This, thought I, is a dismal-looking outcome—two men and a dead horse left high and dry on the sun-flooded prairie. And a rampant ache in my head, seconded by a medium-sized gash in the scalp, didn't make for an access of optimism at that moment.
"Well," I burst out profanely, "we lose again, eh?"