“We’ll set here and wait for them,” said Luke.
But once again they prowled forward, scattered abandoned nests and crossed small bodies of quicksand. Bohn pushed the truck further into the squeaking rushes.
Rum breath, saddle pants, and rank signs through the forest of needles; they did their hunting at night, dragged through roadless quagmires, and trundled under the dusky bluffs of Mistletoe. The black face hunters hooked rosined fingers in their belts, stared about bitterly for the undiscovered lairs. Suddenly, through the briars, they heard the coughing of another engine.
“There,” Bohn pulled the brake, “that’s them!”
“Switch on the lights.” And through the whorls of milky undergrowth they saw the troop of Red Devils on little horned motorcycles.
“You shoot,” cried Wade, “I ain’t going to shoot!”
“Load them guns.”
They fell from the cab and with ragged trouser bottoms, sealed grins, clamored over the sidings and dropped by Wade. Shells spilled under their feet.
“Hit them now,” Bohn pillowed the butt into his shoulder, drew down his head, “or never.”
They fired. From the parapet of the truck a tinkling cloud of shot landed among the vandal herd, rock salt into the buttocks of cornered apple thieves. In the headlights and streaming of the muskets, one motorcycle, as its rider fled, turned to flame under the little seat, reared, contorted into a snake embrace, and fell writhing in fire. A honking set up from the handless horn as the rubber bulb shrank in the heat.