"The stacks have been fired and the ditches cut! Red saw one of them and is on his trail!" Afar in the starlight a pistol snapped viciously; it was answered by a louder detonation, succeeded almost instantly by the fainter whip of the pistol. Then after a few seconds' interim came yet again the fainter report and all was silent.
"That's Red's .45," said the man with curt positiveness. "T'other must have had a Winchester, and he didn't fire but one shot. Red shot last." They were running full speed toward the burning stacks and Ken chose to waste no breath in speculative reply. But he was seeing a different red than that of the flaming hay as he recalled Williams's warning: "Look out fer Matlock. He's a pizen skunk and he'll stoop to anythin' ter play even." The fire being incendiary, admitted but one deduction, and he was praying his gods to give this man into his hands.
"'Twan't Matlock," said Red tersely, in answer to the interrogation in his comrade's eyes as he rode in to where they were standing helplessly watching the destruction of what was fortunately the smallest stack on the ranch, Ken's masterly directions executed by willing hands having extinguished the others. "'Twer that mizzuble Mexican side-kicker o' hisn, an' the damned varmint nearly got me. Shot his hoss an' he come back with his rifle. Got him second shot."
"Yeh fired three," said the man who had summoned Douglass, tentatively.
Red took a chew of tobacco. "Yep. Only winged him an' he possumed on me. Stuck his knife inter me but she glanced on a rib. He's daid now." His voice was unemotional but his face was white. Douglass, watching him sharply, laid his hand on the other's glove.
"Better get up to the shack, Red," he said quietly, "You've lost a lot of juice."
The man smiled wanly, reeled In his saddle, and clutching fruitlessly at the horn, slipped limply down into Douglass's supporting arms. Subsequent examination revealed that he had also been wounded by the Mexican's rifle shot. There was a ragged hole through the fleshy part of his thigh and hemorrhage had been profuse. Declining all offers of assistance, Douglass carried him to the bunkhouse and laid him on the rough bed. Looking at the white face of the fellow before him, his mouth resolved itself into a thin cruel line.
"By God, Matlock, you will pay in full for this!" He had unconsciously sworn it aloud and the men gathered around the bed of their stricken comrade knew that supreme sentence had been passed. They made no comment, but as Douglass, rolling up his sleeves, bent to the clumsy but efficient surgery that was to save Red's life, one of them nudged his neighbor and said inconsequentially, "Red weighs good two hunnerd!" And he looked admiringly at the ripples playing silkily under the bronze satin of his foreman's arms.
But far out on the prairie, riding in headlong guilty haste from the Nemesis that his craven heart dreaded as even his cowardice had never dreaded anything before, Matlock shivered telepathically and turned in his saddle. A startled night-fowl fluttered uncannily over his head and he crouched almost to his saddle-bow with terror. The flutter of Azrael's wings seemed very close!
An hour later, as Douglass emerged from the bunkhouse, old Abigail hesitatingly accosted him. "Yuah to come up to thu house, Ken, right way! Now don' yuh be foolish, boy; remember she's only a gel—an' young at that!"