“‘Hank,’ says he, solemn like and earnest as ——, ‘I wish tuh —— they’d uh killed me, instead uh wingin’ me, like they did.’
“And he shows me his gun arm, busted between the shoulder and elbow by a soft-nosed bullet. I ties up the arm the best I kin and we commences that thirty-mile walk home. Ol’ Joe never whimpered onct durin’ that night’s walk, though I knowed he was sufferin’ bad. Ner did he do ary talkin’. Up till then he’d bin right hopeful about gittin’ them stolen cattle back. But bein’ set afoot and sech musta drug it outa him bad, fer he ain’t never bin the same man since.
“There’s them that claims he’s scared uh Fox, and sometimes it shore looks like they done read the sign right. Me, I don’t know. Seems like, if he was scared uh Fox, that he’d throw up his tail and quit. But he still holds the job down. Some day, I look fer him tuh kill Fox er git killed a-tryin’.”
“Didn’t yuh never make no more fight tuh find them cattle?” asked Tad after some silence.
“Kipp done went down into the hills two-three times. Each time he went there, he come back afoot, lookin’ like he’d seen a ghost. And somewhere in his hide ’ud be a bullet hole. Not bad, jest a kinda souvenir uh the occasion, as the feller says.
“Onct, I gathers me a posse uh cow-men from around the county and we slips into the brakes after night. Injuns couldn’t uh done it more quiet. We’d gone mebbe so five-six miles and was goin’ single file down a steep trail that led into a canyon. Sudden like, fifty feet ahead uh my hoss—I’m in the lead, sabe?—a match sputters. Before I kin unlimber my cannon, a heap uh brush blazes up. There we are, square in the light uh the blaze, the trail too narrer tuh turn around, with a dead drop uh two hundred feet on one side and a shale cliff on the other. On the trail behind us, afore we gits our senses good, another brush pile busts into flame.”
“‘Do you idjits turn back from here er does we start a shootin’?’ bellers a gent from the dark up above.
“It don’t take no more’n a half-witted sheep herder tuh decide which to do. We tells this gent that we’re turnin’ back.
“‘Fifty feet down the trail,’ says he, ‘the trail widens. When the front fire goes out, ride over it to that place and turn. Ary man that passes that wide point, gits a free ticket tuh ——. Us boys is holed up here fer a spell and we ain’t cravin’ no visitors. The next man that rides into these brakes, don’t see his happy home no more.’”
“That ended it, eh?” inquired Tad.