“Hi!—you fellows down there!” Dick shouted. “Keep your distance or we’ll fire on you!”
The reply to this sportsmanlike warning came so quickly that it seemed as if it must have been planned beforehand. Instantly the cripple dodged behind the trembling burro, and using it for a breastwork and its pack for a rest, opened fire with a repeating rifle, sending shot after shot hurtling up into the crevice mouth, while his two companions, guns in hand, started to climb straight up the slope under cover of this bombardment. Owing to the high angle at which the crippled robber had to shoot, the defenders of the mine were still safe so long as they did not get within the line of fire, and by lying flat on the crevice floor they could see without being seen.
Little Purdick’s face was white and drawn, but his hands did not tremble when he took careful aim at the leading one of the two scrambling climbers. “Don’t kill him if you can help it,” Larry cautioned, and as he said it, the small-calibre rifle spoke. For an instant it seemed as if Purdick had missed. [Then the leading man]—it was the black-whiskered one—stooped to clasp his right leg just above the knee, [wavered for a second, and ended by tumbling backward upon his follower], with the result that both rolled together to the bottom of the slope, knocking the burro and the cripple down as they went.
[Then the leading man wavered for a second, and ended by tumbling backward upon his follower.]
Larry clapped the small marksman on the back.
“Good work! Bully good work!” he cried. “If you’d had a cannon you couldn’t have done any better!”
Dick had the glass to his eyes again. “They’re overhauling the shot one and tying his leg up,” he reported. “Now the cripple—the natural one—is shaking his fist at us. I’ll bet that little surprise party’ll cool ’em off some!”
It did, so far as any further attempt to take the mine by direct assault went. As soon as the wounded man could get upon his feet and limp along, the three dodged in among the gulch trees, towing the laden burro, and were lost to sight.