“They’ll be lookin’ for us,” opines Windy, and then he asks—
“Was Snag Thorn with ’em?”
“Nope. One feller had a broken nose and a cock-eye, and the other had bat-ears and a yellow mustache.”
“‘Blondy’ McClure and ‘Peeler’ Malloy,” says Windy. “As fine a pair of horse-thieves as ever wore guns. Them two sure do show lack of Sunday schoolin’, and I reckon this is the time that we teaches ’em a few morals. Lemme get my old 40-82 lined up on either one—just lemme, tha’sall.”
“You too,” says I, complaining-like. “Want to kill somebody? You two hombres hankers for gore regardless, don’t yuh? Regular killers, eh? It’s a danged good thing you has a cool brain among yuh.”
“Cool ——!” snorts Hashknife. “Froze since the Winter of the big wind.”
“Course, this stealin’ of our lady boss don’t mean nothin’ to you,” says Windy, sarcastic-like, easing himself in the saddle when his bronc kinda loosens up. “You better go back and chop wood.”
“We won’t need any heat,” says I and everybody shuts up. We swung into town and rode straight to a crowd in front of the saloon. On the sidewalk lays a feller who looks a heap like he had met the enemy. We jerks up in front of ’em and looks the bunch over. Hashknife and Windy cocked their rifles and I’m expectin’ things to start whooping. This bat-eared, yellow-mustached hombre steps out of the crowd, and Windy spurs in close to him and says:
“Talk out loud, Blondy. Where’s the lady?”
“Aw-w-w-w_, I dunno!” wails Blondy.