Wolf's slouching frame shifted slightly and froze.
"He never went heeled," continued Johnny's even, dispassionate voice. The open palm of his right hand struck Wolf's face with vicious force. There came two roars which sounded almost as one, and Johnny, leaping pantherishly aside out of the rolling smoke, held two guns on the paralyzed group.
"Wolf shot him," he explained, backing away behind his ominous guns. He whistled softly, and Pepper, despite the dangling reins, lifted her head high and came to him.
Big Tom recovered himself first and took his eyes from the figure sprawled on the ground. He was beginning to believe them. He glanced at Johnny and back to the prostrate figure. It was incredible that a man with Wolf's courage, and ability with weapons, should shoot down an old, helpless tramp, whose greatest offense could hardly be more than a verbal one, especially against a two-gun killer. Bad as he was, and hardened, the foreman could not stomach such a murder, and, snapping a warning to his companions, who still stared at what had been Wolf Forbes, he looked at Johnny, who was preparing to mount, and he called out in a voice ringing with sincerity: "Put 'em up, Nelson; an' ride off. I'll knock th' man down that pulls a gun!"
Johnny slipped the guns into their sheaths, swung up into the saddle, wheeled, and pushed Pepper at a lope over the trail toward town without a single backward glance.
Big Tom watched him for a moment and then wheeled and glanced down at the ground. "Wolf, huh? All right." He turned to the thoughtful group. "Dig a hole somewhere out on th' range an' dump that into it," he said contemptuously, and strode toward the ranchhouse.
CHAPTER XIX
"GIVE ETERNAL REST——"