One man stayed with him, knelt beside him. The others flung themselves astride, broke away on the run, spreading fanwise as they rode. Every man was armed. Robin had seen that they rode armed once they crossed the Big Muddy. Two or three carried rifles under their stirrup leathers. Robin smiled to himself as the dust rolled out from under those drumming hoofs.
“He’ll have to go some to get away. And if he does he’ll think he got me,” he reflected. Then, in answer to Jim Stratton’s anxious query:
“I don’t know. I don’t feel as if I was finished. But somethin’ sure stung me. Guess I’ll look.”
Baring his waist showed a red line like a scar of a brand, where the bullet had seared his skin.
“Now that’s what I’d call close,” Robin commented. “Darned if it didn’t feel like it had plowed right through me. She sure stings but don’t amount to much. Get my horse, Jim. I’m all right.”
Stratton galloped over to where Robin’s mount after a brief bolt stood still on the fallen reins. He led him back, Robin got up, mounted, nursing that sharp pain in his side and a bruised shoulder from the fall, but practically unharmed.
“We’ll join the hunt,” he said briefly, and rode for the eastern bank.
Empty bench land, brown and yellow with ripe grass, a network of coulees, canyons, ravines, clumps of pines, great areas of sagebrush, the Bear Paws looming high and blue on the north, met their gaze. No riders moved in sight, only a few bunches of wild cattle stirred to flight by the pursuit.
“Hark!” said Stratton, after a minute. “They’ve opened the ball.”
A burst of shots rose, echoed, died away. The plains silence closed in again. The morning air fanned their faces, rippled the long grass. They waited, watching, five minutes, ten, half an hour, the sun dazzling their eyes as they looked to the east.