“My ——!” snorted Sleepy. “A rifle can’t even kill it!”
Marion was laughing and crying alternately, and Sleepy grasped her by the arm to prevent her from going out to the burro.
“It just creased him,” explained Sleepy. “See where that blood streak runs down his neck? That bullet went through his neck just over the vertebrae, knocked him plumb out for a while, but he’s as good as ever now.”
Apollo looked reproachfully at Sleepy, stretched his neck tentatively and moved over to the shade of the wall, evidently none the worse for his experience.
When Hashknife left the patio gate he hugged the wall, circling to the rear of the bunk-house, from where he ran to the stable. He decided that the shot had been fired from a point on the hill, near the upper end of a small cañon. It was about the only spot on that side where a man could get elevation enough to enable him to see the center of the patio.
There was plenty of brush on the slope behind the stable; brush tall enough to conceal him from any one on the slope; so Hashknife did not hesitate to head directly for the spot he had in mind. There was no more shooting, but Hashknife could not be sure that the bushwhacker had not seen him start from the patio; so when he was half-way up to the break of the cañon, he went carefully, taking advantage of the heaviest cover in sight.
Hashknife realized his own danger. It was almost impossible for him to move without making a noise in the dry brush. And he did not know what moment a bullet might search him out. Working to the right, he came to the cañon rim, where he sprawled under a bush, listening closely.
Near him a flock of quail scurried about in the brush, their peculiar call, ventriloquistic, “Sit right there!” echoing back from the cañon-walls. One of them passed within inches of his rifle muzzle, a nervously jerking handful of blue and bronze, evidently puzzled at this sprawled figure of a human, which did not move.
The quail were working up the slope. Peering beneath the brush, Hashknife could see the little blue fellows running from cover to cover, while their calling became more faint. Hashknife slid farther out on the rim, and was about to get to his feet, when he saw the flock of quail whir up from the brush, and come hurtling down the cañon, swinging in below him, scattering badly, and beginning their warning cries again.
Something or somebody had disturbed them. Then he heard the sound of something coming down through the brush toward him. He got to his haunches, swinging his rifle into position as a horse and rider broke through the brush, almost against him.