“Yes,” laughed Bell, “I thought I had you that time, but I fired too quick; the lights went out, and then the room was full of smoke and bullets. When things cleared up, you wasn’t there.”
“No,” said Lattin, “you folks were too thick for me, and I lit out; I swum the Rio Grande, just as Ben Thompson did when he got catched in the same place and in the same way. He got off without a scratch, as he did hundreds of times before, only to catch it at Santone at last, as he was bound to do sooner or later.”
CHAPTER IX.
DEPARTURE OF THE GUEST.
“BEN and me done travelled a good deal together,” said Rickard, with a faint sigh; “he was the quickest chap on the shoot I ever met; I never knowed him to miss when he had any show at all, and he was the luckiest fellow that ever walked. Do you know what Ben’s rule was?” asked Rickard, turning toward the cowboys, as if about to impart a piece of delightful news.
“It was to shoot whenever he had the slightest excuse,” replied Strubell, who evidently had little respect for one of the most famous characters that Texas ever brought to the surface.
“Whenever he got into a shooting scrap he always let the other chap fire first; for then, when he let fly, he had a good case of self-defence. He always done that, as he told me himself.”