“Then I’ll tie you there. You’re going with me to Bonita.”
“There’s more Apaches. We’ll hear from ’em.”
“All right; if that’s how it pans out, they’d hear from me, too.”
Dell was strong, in spite of her slender build. Patterson could help himself but very little, but the girl pulled him upright, got one of his feet into the stirrup, and then heaved him onto the horse’s back.
There the sergeant drooped limply, hanging with both hands to the saddle-horn.
Hastily unshipping her picket-rope, Dell bound the wounded trooper to his mount, her deft fingers flying like lightning.
Then, with Patterson’s carbine in her hands, she leaped swiftly to the back of Silver Heels, caught the end of the picket-rope, which she had passed through the bit-rings of the army horse, and started on.
Sping, z-z-z-up!
The Apache’s rifle spoke again, the bullet whistling sibilantly through the air.
Dell felt a twitching of her buckskin blouse on the left side. She had not been hit by the flying slug, but she had had a close call.