The Texan laughed: "Just as big a damned fool as ever, Purdy. Just as big a four-flusher, too. You better shoot while you've got the chance. 'Cause if you don't I'll kill you, sure as hell."
Purdy sneered: "Gittin' in yer bluff right up to the last, eh? Thought you could sneak up an' git me when I wasn't lookin', eh? Thought—" The sentence was never finished. The Texan's expression suddenly changed. His eyes fixed wildly upon a point directly behind Purdy and he cried out in sudden alarm:
"Don't kill him, Cass! He's mine!"
Like a flash, Purdy whirled, and like a flash the Texan was out of his saddle and behind a rock. And as Jennie had predicted, he hit the ground a-shootin'. His own horse had shielded him from the others whose attention had been momentarily diverted to their leader. Instantly Purdy discovered the ruse—but too late. As he whirled again to face the Texan, the latter's gun roared, and one of Purdy's guns crashed against a rock-fragment, as its owner, his wrist shattered, dived behind his rock with a scream of mingled rage and pain. Three times more the Texan shot, beneath the belly of his horse, and the two outlaws to the right pitched forward in crumpled heaps and lay motionless. Frenzied by the noise, the big blue roan plunged blindly forward. The man in front made a frantic effort to get out of his way, failed, and the next moment, crashed backward against a rock-fragment from which he ricocheted from sight while the great blue roan galloped on, reins flying, and stirrups wildly lashing his sides.
"That leaves just the two of us, Purdy," drawled the Texan from the shelter of his rock, as he reloaded his gun.
A vicious snarl from the hiding place of the outlaw was the only answer.
"I told you you was a fool not to shoot while you had the chance. I'm goin' to get you, now. But, seein' that you wasn't in no hurry about it, I won't be neither. There's quite a few things I want you to hear—things you ought to know for the good of your soul."
"You don't dast to git me!" came exultingly, from behind Purdy's rock, "if you do, what'll become of her—the pilgrim's woman? She's right now layin' tied an' gagged in a mud crack where you nor no one else won't never find her. What'll become of her, if you git me?"
The Texan grinned to himself, and after a moment of silence, called hesitatingly: "Say, Purdy, you wouldn't do that! Wouldn't let a woman die like that without tellin' where she is."
"The hell I won't!"