“’Tain’t fittin’ thet a lady should witness warfare and bloodshed!” Nomad protested, with a twinkling smile.
“How do you know it ain’t?” she asked. “Was you ever a lady? And, if you never was, how kin you speak fer ’em? I’m a lady, and I know more what’s becomin’ ter one than you do. So, Nicholas, jes’ shet yer baboon head and stop tryin’ ter give me advice.”
“Katie,” said Nomad, with another grin, “the only way ter give you advice and have it ter take effect would be ter pump it inter ye with a shotgun.”
The fight which Nick Nomad anticipated, and which he had heard those three outlaws talking about, came even sooner than he expected it would.
The Redskin Rovers were already in the timbered belt that fringed the lower hills. As they emerged on the edge of the mesa they were set upon without warning by the outlaws, who charged, riding out of the timber, and attacked with wild yells and a firing of rifles.
The unexpectedness of the attack threw the Redskin Rovers into confusion. But they knew who these white men were, and that they were not only their rivals in robbery and bloodshed, but their deadly foes as well.
They rallied under the inspiriting commands of their disguised white leader, and the fight that followed was sanguine enough to please even Pizen Kate, who climbed into a tree as soon as it began, and from that coign of vantage watched it throughout.
Nomad and Buffalo Bill also climbed into trees and witnessed the battle between the Redskin Rovers and the white outlaws.
For a little while it seemed that the Indians would break at once into flight, so desperate and deadly was the outlaw charge; but when the white leader put himself at their head and rallied them they made a stout stand.
The tide of battle rolled out upon the mesa. Men and horses dropped under rifle fire, and under arrow and Indian lance. The combatants rode at each other, shooting, hacking with knives, stabbing with lances, and even seizing each other and rolling to the ground from their saddles, to continue there to the death this feud of hatred and revenge.