He regarded the object again. "That shore looks like a head, all right." He felt a pebble under his hand and drawing back a little he covered the questionable object and then tossed the pebble at it. "Huh, if it's a head, why in thunder didn't it move?"
There were footsteps outside the south window and he listened, the Colt ready to stop any one rash enough to look in, Clausen or no Clausen.
"Where's Clausen, Shaw?" said a voice, and the reply was so low Johnny could not make it out.
"Yes; that's just what I want to know," and Johnny stared in frowning intentness at the supposed head. He moved closer to the object and by dint of staring thought he saw the head and shoulders of a man face down in a black, shallow pool. Then his hand became wet and he jerked it back and wiped it on his sleeve; he could hardly believe his senses. As he grasped the significance of his discovery he grinned sheepishly and moved back to the north wall, where no rustler's bullet could find him. "Lord! An' I got him th' first crack! Got him shooting by ear!"
"Johnny! Johnny!" came Red's roar, anxious and querulous.
Johnny wheeled and shook his Colt out of the window, for the moment forgetting the peril of losing sight of the opening in the other wall. "I'll Johnny you, you blankety-blank fool!" he shouted. Then he heard a curse at the south window and turned quickly, his Colt covering the opening. "An' I'll Johnny you too, you cow-stealing coyotes! Stick yore thieving heads in that windy an' holler for yore Clausen! I can show you where he is, an' send you after him if you'll just take a look! Want them cartridges, hey? Well, come an' get 'em!"
A bullet, fired at an angle through the window, was the reply and several hummed through the open door and glanced off the steep sides of the ridge. Waiting until they stopped coming he dropped and wriggled forward along the west wall, feeling in front of him until he touched a box. Grasping it he dragged the important cartridges to him and then backed to the north window with them.
He fell to stuffing his pockets with the captured ammunition and then stopped short and grinned happily. "Might as well hold this shack an' wait for somebody to look in that windy. They can't get me."
He dropped the box and walked to the heavy plank door, slamming it shut. He heard the thud of bullets in it as he propped it, and laughed. "Can't shoot through them planks, they're double thick." He smelled his sticky fingers. "An' they're full of resin, besides."
He stopped suddenly and frowned as a fear entered his mind; and then smiled, reassured. "Nope; no rustling snake can climb up that ridge—not with Red an' Pete watching it."