CHAPTER XII
THE CLEAN-UP
A little later Buck and Sandy Davitt sat in the dust, cigarettes in their still tremulous hands, and watched their victims.
“After all, we bungled it a heap,” said Davitt morosely. “Now there’ll be hell to pay and no pitch hot! Buck, we’d ought to finish it.”
Before them lay Steve Arnold, shot through the leg and with an ugly scalp wound; unconscious, but far from dead. The sheriff of Pecos lay beside Arnold, and was equally unconscious. His right knee had been dislocated in the fall, he had a bullet through the right shoulder, another had broken his right wrist.
“We’d ought to finish ’em for our own sake now,” repeated Sandy Davitt.
Buck shook his head. He was white to the lips.
“Do it if you can, Sandy. I can’t.”
Sandy Davitt picked up his gun, compressed his lips, then with an oath thrust the weapon away. It was more than he could do. Buck smiled ironically.
“It ain’t so bad, at that,” he observed. “They’re both put out o’ business and in our hands; anyhow, it’s better’n if we’d killed them, Sandy. Here’s the story. They come on us and started shooting; downed them two boys yonder ’fore we could git into action. Savvy? So we let ’em have it in self-defense. How you goin’ to prove otherwise?”