“Me and the sheriff had words. That gray started to pitchin’, and I busted a rein and couldn’t pull his head, and—and the jug-head bucked all the way back home. First runnin’ bucker I ever seen. My ——, but that bronc can hop, skip and jump somethin’ awful.”
“Mary Jane?” asks Windy. “Where is she?”
“They took her with ’em,” says Hashknife, kinda whispering. “The sheriff and Bowers and a couple of them Bar 20 hombres.”
“Took her!” explodes Windy. “What for, Hashknife?”
“Said she owned the Circle Dot and they wanted her. Seems that that last feller that was shot died. I called the sheriff and he drawed, but I shaded him a little.
“What in —— do yuh keep a bronc like that around for?”
“I thought it was the same gray that Mary Jane rode, honest I did. I never looked at it close but I seen it kinda hump under the saddle, and I thinks maybe it feels cocky and I was goin’ to shake it up a little but I was the one that got shook. Couple of bullets fanned past me, but they’d ’a’ had to have a shotgun to hit me on the wing thataway.”
“What are we goin’ to do?” I asks.
“Do? Sleepy, we’re goin’ to get our hoss back or they’ll have to build a new town. I’m goin’ through that town like quicksilver through a sieve.”
“And land in the penitentiary,” says I. “Cool off a little, Hashknife, and do a little thinking. There’s only three of us, yuh understand.”