“Reckon they’re here somewheres,” Allen said as their horses’ hoofs rang on the stones of a dry wash.
McAllister grunted, then he jumped and swore, for directly beside him a wolf mourned his lonely cry. Once, twice, three times it rang out in the night.
“Darn yuh, Jim, no wonder they calls yuh the Wolf, if yuh bark like that. Darn me, I sure thinks a big lobo is gettin’ ready to jump me,” McAllister complained.
He saw Allen’s teeth flash in the darkness. Then ahead of them there came an answer.
“Gosh, yuh got a real wolf answerin’ yuh!”
“Yuh didn’t tell me Jack was with Toothpick,” Allen cried.
A short time before, McAllister had complained at the matter-of-fact way Allen had taken what he thought was exciting news, but now Allen’s voice quivered like that of a man who has just been reprieved from the scaffold.
“Hell, Honeyboy—get along there some—don’t yuh know your ol’ boss?”
In response, the scrawny gray hurled itself up the wash. McAllister urged his horse up after the gray, but was rapidly outdistanced, for Honeyboy sped up the wash, with its treacherous footing, as rapidly as most horses could have run over a smooth plain in the daylight.
McAllister was still some hundred yards from the small fire around which he saw three men standing, when Allen brought his gray to a sliding stop and sprang from the saddle and landed on top of one of them. When McAllister arrived, he saw the two engaged in what appeared a desperate struggle; and all the time both contestants hurled the most blood-curdling oaths at each other. He stared at them in amazement. They whirled this way and that. The other man was no larger than Allen, but looked years older, because of the heavy beard that covered his face. Little by little, the other bested Allen, and, finally pinning him down on his face, planted both heels in the small of Allen’s back.