“Danged if I know! They smokes me up and chases me here.”
“Save me!” yelps the lady, sprawling on the bunk. “I’m sick as ——!”
Such language makes me glance up, but I glues my eyes back to that crack again, where I got some chinking pushed out. I sees a bronc’s legs, so I elevates the muzzle of my gun and salutes him.
A couple of bullets whispers logs, so I rolls over past the bed. My elbow bumps on something, and I glances down.
“Come here!” I yells. “Here’s a cellar!” and I begins tugging at the carpet what covers the door. If the carpet hadn’t been ripped I’d ’a’ never found it. Magpie skids over to me on his hands and knees, and begins heaving on the handle.
“Don’t!” yelps the lady. “Don’t go down there! There’s a—a—snake down there!”
“Preferable to hot lead,” I yells, and slips over the square hole in the floor.
Magpie don’t wait to crawl down—he hopped. Bang. A gun explodes right at my lower extremity, and I feels that I got to buy a new pair of suspenders. It sure was close. I lets loose and drops about seven feet. The door drops back and we’re in darkness.
“Did I fall on yuh, Ike?” asks Magpie.
“You did not,” says I, groping around.