“What if I did gun him?” the high-pitched voice maundered on. “Tried to steal my bronc, he did, an’ I wouldn’t stand for it a minute.... All right. Light yore fires. Burn me up, you hounds of Hades. I’m not askin’ no favors. Not none a-tall.”
The big man’s hand groped at his belt. Brown fingers closed on the butt of a forty-five. Instantly both rescuers were galvanized to life. Dud’s foot scraped into the air a cloud of sand and dust as Bob dived forward. He plunged at Houck a fraction of a second behind his friend.
Into the blue sky a bullet went singing. Bob had been in time to knock the barrel of the revolver up with his outflung hand.
CHAPTER XXXV
THREE IN A PIT
Wounded though he was, Houck managed to make a good deal of trouble for the punchers before they pinned him down and took the forty-five from him. His great strength was still at command, and he had the advantage that neither of his rescuers wanted to injure him during the struggle. They thrashed over the ground, arms and legs outflung wildly. Houck gave up only when his vigor collapsed.
His surrender was complete. He lay weak and panting, bleeding from reopened wounds, for the time as helpless and submissive as a child.
From a canteen they gave him water. Afterward they washed and tied up the wounds, bathed the fevered face, and kept the mosquitoes from him by fanning them away.