Flandrau made a movement to rise and they jerked him to his feet.
“You’ve played hell,” one of the men told the boy.
He was a sawed-off little fellow known as Dutch. Flandrau had seen him in the Map of Texas country try a year or two before. The rest were strangers to the boy. All of them looked at him out of hard hostile eyes. He was scarcely a human being to them; rather a wolf to be stamped out of existence as soon as it was convenient. A chill ran down Curly’s spine. He felt as if someone were walking on his grave.
At a shift in the group Flandrau’s eyes fell on his friend lying in the sand with face turned whitely to the sky he never would see again. It came over him strangely enough how Mac used to break into a little chuckling laugh when he was amused. He had quit laughing now for good and all. A lump came into the boy’s throat and he had to work it down before he spoke.
“There’s a picture in his pocket, and some letters I reckon. Send them to Miss Myra Anderson, Tombstone, care of one of the restaurants. I don’t know which one.”
“Send nothin’,” sneered Dutch, and coupled it with a remark no decent man makes of a woman on a guess.
Because of poor Mac lying there with the little hole in his temple Curry boiled over. With a jerk his right arm was free. It shot out like a pile-driver, all his weight behind the blow. Dutch went down as if a charging bull had flung him.
Almost simultaneously Curly hit the sand hard. Before he could stir three men were straddled over his anatomy. One of them ground his head into the dust.
“You would, eh? We’ll see about that. Jake, bring yore rope.”
They tied the hands of the boy, hauled him to his feet, and set him astride a horse. In the distance a windmill of the Circle C ranch was shining in the morning sun. Toward the group of buildings clustered around this two of his captors started with Flandrau. A third was already galloping toward the ranch house to telephone for a doctor.