“It’s all right, boys,” Mead yelled to his friends. “Don’t shoot any more.”
“You’re a fool, Emerson,” Halliday went on, “or you’d give yourself up, go down to Plumas and clear yourself,—if you can—and have this thing over with. For we’re goin’ to get you yet, somehow.”
Antone Colorow spurred his horse close to Mead and with all the varied and virulent execration of which the cow-boy is capable shouted at him:
“Yes, and if they don’t get you, I will! I come after you till I get you, and I come a-smoking every time! You won’t need a trial after I get through with you! You’ve done me up, but I’ll get even and more too!”
Mead listened quietly, looking the man in the eye. “Look here,” he said, “what did you reckon would happen to any man who tried to rope me? Did you think I’d let you-all drag me into camp at your horse’s tail? I’m sorry I had to do that, but I didn’t want to kill you. Here, Jim, you fellows better tie up Antone’s wrists.” Mead offered his own handkerchief to help out the bandages, and, suddenly remembering the whisky flask in his breast pocket, took it out and told the wounded man to finish its contents.
While this was going on Tuttle and Ellhorn rode up. The rain had stopped, and through a rift in the eastern clouds the level, red rays of the sun were shining. Mead met their eager, anxious faces with a smile.
“It’s all right, boys. Jim says the game’s off for this morning.”
Nick and Tom turned black and scowling looks on Halliday and his party, and the deputy sheriff, manifestly nervous, rode toward them with an exaggeratedly genial greeting:
“Howdy, boys! Put up your guns! We ain’t goin’ to have any gun-fight this morning.”
“How do you know we ain’t?” growled Tom.