"How about that one, Lafe?" the outlaw yelled, as a bullet from his 25-35 skimmed along Johnson's shoulder and back.
"Two inches too high, Steve," said Lafe, without resentment.
Shortly after this the two pursuers ceased firing, though maintaining a watchful eye for any movement of the fugitive, and partook ravenously of bread and cold beef, canned tomatoes and tepid water.
Night was creeping over the Malpais. Away to their right yawned the crater whence this monstrous flow of lava had anciently spouted. From its base to its rim was about two hundred feet. On every side were the distorted, grotesque knolls of melted rocks, brick-red in color, stretching for leagues like a slag-heap from the fires of giants. Not a moving thing had they seen in their progress through this region. A tiny shrub clung here and there in a fissure, where an inch or two of soil had been gathered by the winds, and once Lafe, Jr., had narrowly escaped falling into a devil's pincushion. About three miles to the south towered the highest point in the Malpais, a precipitous hill of scorched rock, crowned with a blunt shaft. Atop this shaft was a dark object. Presently it soared into the heavens. It was an eagle.
Johnson scanned the western sky and the glory of the setting sun in its halo of gold and crimson and purple. Then he pointed to where the hosts of the storm kings were gathering above the pines just below El Capitan's peak. From the thickest of the mass a flash of lightning licked downward.
"The cook done told me yesterday," he said to his son, "that that ol' mountain yonder is always raising hell. If the lightning gets going strong, there're better places to be in than these here Malpais, son."
"I reckon you're right," said the boy, not without an anxious glance upward.
They exchanged shots twice with Moffatt before the dark came. With its coming they felt a warm splash of rain upon their faces, and in a leaping flash that illuminated the heavens, they beheld El Capitan swiftly despatching his cloud warriors over the country.
"It's getting blacker'n the wash basin at headquarters," said Lafe, Jr., with a nervous laugh. "Moffatt will give us the slip easy in the dark, Dad."