I seen a feller drop flat and slide under the sidewalk, and I know it won’t take ’em long to get their guns loaded.
We ain’t over a hundred yards from the crowd, and I can see that we can’t scatter ’em much with two guns. I yells at Hashknife to look out. He turned in his saddle, keeping himself between Buddy and the crowd. I saw him throw up his rifle and take deliberate aim. I was trying to shift them books on to the horn of my saddle, so I could shoot. A bullet splatted into the books, but before I could lift my gun, Hashknife’s shot was echoed by a crash that shook up the whole country.
I seen the front of that building jump off the ground and dissolve into smoke.
“Come on, you law rustler!” yelps Hashknife.
I ducked a piece of two-by-four and set my spurs into that hammer-headed gray. Hashknife had been lucky enough to send a bullet into that box of giant caps under the fifty pounds of dynamite.
I looks back as we hammers down the road, but there ain’t a soul on our trail. We swings across a high bridge over Willer Crick, and Hashknife stops.
“Get a couple of heavy rocks, Sleepy,” says he. “Rope one on each side of that bunch of books, and drop the whole works over the side.”
“Ain’t yuh going to turn these over to the law?” I asks.
“No-o-o, I reckon not. I don’t believe in rubbin’ anybody raw. They’ll never know but what we did, and we’ve sure amended the constitution of Sol Vane and his bunch.”
We sunk their law in six feet of swift water and then rode on. About half a mile from the forks of the road we swings around a curve and almost runs over Al Bassett and another man. Bassett’s right arm is out of commission and the other feller is kinda sick from too much lead.