"Some," says I. "Not corked yet. You want to make a line here quick, from the foot of the upper cliff to the edge of the river, and each man make three big fires. Then post half your men to tend fires, and the best shots to hold that line with rifles. Them robbers has got to break through when they knows they're cornered. Here's your boys, Iron. Git a move on!"
"That's so," says Dale, and in two shakes of a duck's tail he was throwing his men into line. Seems that some of the boys rode the robbers' horses, and the rest were bareback on my pack-ponies, so Kate had a fine gallop home with the mob. But when she saw what I'd prescribed for Billy's symptoms, she wasn't pleased, and by the time she'd made herself content, I had to be off on duty. Meanwhile the widow, wild and lone, had flew; so that left Kate without help, her job being coffee to keep the boys awake till we'd daylight to corner the robbers.
Men watching on a strain like that get scary as cats, so by moonset some of our warriors would loose off guns at stumps, trees, rocks, or just because they felt lonesome. After the moon went down, dry fuel got scant, so that the fires waned, and some of our young men must have seen millions of outlaws. When at last something actually happened, it was natural that Ransome should have adventures. He wasn't built for solitude, and when he seen a flag wave from behind a bush, he called the boys from left and right to bunch in and corroborate. The flag kep' waving, and presently two more of our men had to join the bunch because they couldn't shout their good advice, lest the robbers hear every word. I was away to Apex Rock, Iron down in the cañon, and these blasted idiots talked.
Of course old Whiskers knew that antelope will always creep up to inspect any waving rag. Before the excitement was properly begun he and his robbers slipped through our broken line.
If Ransome has time to aim he's dangerous to the neighbors, but since the odds were a thousand to one the gun would kick him as far as next Thursday, I'd have bet my debts he wouldn't hit the party with that flag. Yet that's what happened. He got the widow O'Flynn.
With one heart-rending, devastating howl she went to grass, and she did surely shriek as if there was no hereafter. Murthered in the limb she was, and as I left to follow the sounds of them escaping robbers, I didn't have time to send a carpenter.
CHAPTER IX
THE UNTRUTHFUL PRISONER
Jesse's Narrative