"Steady, everybody!" shouted Yellin' Kid and his strenuous voice, rumbling and echoing through the silent morning, seemed to calm them all. "Get down on your faces! Drop!" commanded the cowboy, while puffs of smoke, flashes of fire and nerve-racking reports told that the attack from ambush was in some force.
CHAPTER XI
THE SURPRISE
Camp had been made by the boy ranchers and their friends in a little glade, amid rocks and stunted brush, a natural fortification as it were, with only one side open. And it was from this one side that the shots from the ambushers were pouring in.
Though Yellin' Kid and Snake Purdee had said nothing to the boys about it, the place had been purposely selected with an eye to its possible defense.
"You can't tell what will happen in this country," Snake had said to Yellin' Kid, and the latter agreed, lowering his voice, for once at least, so Bud and his cousins could not hear.
"We've got to be on our guard," Snake had added, and so, while Bud, Nort and Dick would have been willing to slump down almost anywhere, and camp as soon as they found water, this secluded site was selected.
The wisdom of this was now apparent, since, had there been no natural shelter available, several casualties might have resulted from the opening of a fusillade at dawn.
As it was, however, so quickly had the cowboys (and with them I now include Buck Tooth) taken to shelter, that, aside from a few minor wounds on the part of two or three, no one was badly hit.
"What's it all about?" called Bud from behind his sheltering stone to Snake. Bud's gun was hot, for he had emptied the magazine, and with little effect, as was afterward learned.