“Yes. You spoke about something that might exonerate him, and I knew he’d never have a chance if the sheriff caught him.”
He looked at her curiously.
“You still think quite a lot of him, don’tcha?”
She nodded slowly and winced when another bullet whined over their heads.
“We’ve got to git out of here,” said Cultus. “They’re crossfirin’ this bunch of brush, and sooner or later they’ll kill both of us. If yuh ain’t afraid of a few stickers, we’ll do a little crawlin’.”
“I’m not afraid,” she said simply.
“Sneak in on my left side and keep down low. Mebbe we can fool ’em for a little while. Nose in the dirt, sister. Don’t try to look up, and crawl on yore elbows. Drag yore legs. That’s the stuff. C’mon.”
It was a slow process and painful. There were plenty of small cactus, and Jane discovered that nearly everything she crawled over had a sticker of some kind. Foot by foot they slid away through the sand. No bullets searched through the mesquite now.
“They know we’ve moved,” Cultus told her, “and they’re movin’ to a place where they can see us again.”
They made a hundred feet and flattened out behind some low bushes, while Cultus lifted his head in a vain endeavour to see the shooters.