Differing speed had strung the pursuers out in a scattering column, and Sliver grinned his delight at the arrangement. “Like bowling at the county fair. Miss one, you’ve still a chance at the next behind. Set ’em up again!” he yelled as, following their volley, two men and a horse plunged forward on the ground.
“A bit lower, Son,” Bull quietly admonished Gordon. “Aim at the jine of man an’ horse. That gives you a seven-foot target.”
“One cigar, one baby down!”
Sliver’s second yell marked the fall of two more horses and another man—shot by Bull out of his saddle. Aiming and firing with the deadly accuracy bred by years of just such fighting against more sagacious foes, they dropped the leaders as fast as they came on; in three minutes had drawn a dead-line of men and horses across their front. And that deadly practice told. Brave enough, after their lights, the raiders were not accustomed to such shooting. In the revolutionary wars their own practice, like that of their opponents, was to spring up out of a trench, yell “Viva Mexico!” fire in the enemy’s direction, and drop back again, trusting to the god of war to find a billet for the bullet. Turning, they raced back for the opposite ridge, spurred on by the galling shooting that emptied two more saddles.
Bull’s black glance following them with longing that confirmed Jake’s diagnosis—he would have “run amuck among ’em” if left to himself. The more steadily, perhaps, for his deadly thirst to kill, he had aimed and fired with automatic precision. Withal, he had found time to note Gordon’s steady shooting.
“You done fine, lad,” he commented. “If there was only ourselves, I’d be in favor of carrying it to ’em. But”—his glance went to Lee, who was holding the horses—“we’ll have to fall back. They’ve had their lesson an’ ain’t a-going to try any more fool charges. Now they’ll try an’ flank us. While Sliver an’ Jake hold ’em, we’ll run back to the next ridge.”
But Gordon, flushed with his taste of battle, rebelled. “What’s the matter with me staying? You fellows care for me like three hens scratching for an orphan chicken. I’m tired of this sheltered life.”
“‘Sheltered life’?” Communing with himself, Jake glanced at the grisly dead-line. “‘Sheltered life,’ an’ him with two stretched out down there.”
“Comes o’ being married,” Sliver added. “No married man has a right to run with batchelders.”
“That’s right,” Jake approved. “It’s up to you to look after your wife.”