"Look out!" yelled the crowd on the fence-top. "Look out!"
And Bowles scrambled up and fell over to one side. His knees were weak; they would not bear him; and through the dust cloud he saw Dunbar slide and turn again. Then of a sudden he was in a tangle of legs and stirrups and striking feet, and somebody grabbed him by the arm. Three pistol shots rang out above him; he was snaked violently aside; and old Dunbar went down like a log. Somebody had killed him, that was certain; but it was not Brigham, for he could tell by the characteristic cursing that it was his partner who had pulled him out and was dragging him across the corral. He blinked and opened his eyes as he fetched up against the fence—and there was Dixie Lee, with a big, smoking pistol in her hand, striding after him out of the dust.
She looked down at him, her eyes blazing with anger; and then, snapping the empty cartridges out of the Colt's, she handed it back to a puncher.
"Well," she said, "I hope you boys are satisfied now!" And without a second look at Brigham, Bowles, Hardy Atkins, or the remains of Dunbar, she turned and strode back to the house.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY
When Bat Wing Bowles got up out of the dirt he was shaken in body and spirit. His corporeal frame felt as if it had been passed through a carpet-beater, and he had lost some of his most precious illusions. Certainly, if there was any way by which a tenderfoot might hope to achieve a little hard-earned fame in the Far West, it was not by riding bronks; and now, before he could wipe the blood from his nose, they were blaming him for all their troubles.
"The blank-blanked greenhorn!" cursed Hardy Atkins, pacing to and fro and gazing at the hulk of Dunbar. "I tol' 'im to keep off that hawse! Never would've let 'im rode 'im—not for a thousand dollars! And then, the minute my back's turned—and Dix right there to copper the play—he goes and pulls off this! But I don't care—I never done nothin'! You boys seen 'im—he done it himse'f!"