up the oncoming horse-drivers a few minutes.
He was snaking up on his belly now, the six-shooter out in front as he rested weight on a corded wrist. He had the keen bowie he used for skinning, clasped in his teeth. After the alarm there would be little chance to reload the revolver.
Now he heard voices. There it was, the shallow hole where the three Indians had hidden themselves. A black topknot raised. Then came a grunt of surprise. Black, beady eyes in a red-brown face swivelled toward Joe. A rifle came up, as the jabbered alarm brought the buck's two companions into sight.
Joe shot and scrambled to his feet. His side stung waspishly, as the black powder bloomed from the observation hole. Joe dodged and ran forward. He shot down now as two men diverged from the smoke, rising to meet him.
One yelled and shot. Joe staggered around, with a stinging there high at the left of his neck, where he realized the warm red flood was coming from a wound—probably a shattered collarbone, since his left arm was hard to use.
He shot twice, and saw the two braves fall away. One kicked and yowled, then choked as red foam slobbered on his mouth. The other was still. And between them as Joe came right on, was a buck kneeling. His head had fallen down in front, though, and there was a wide gray-red blob of brains and blood exposed to the air.
Joe had no idea of burial service this time. He dashed ahead, and to the back of the corral trap. There he slashed the sustaining rawhides with his bowie, till a section twenty feet wide fell down. Then he crouched, and thumbed in fresh shells fast, into the Colt.
Then the horses came. Three of them, pressed madly by those behind, stumbled and fell, got up snorting, fell again. It was confusion, but into it, barely escaping being knocked down and trampled a dozen times, darted Joe.
He had glimpsed the trouble; and despite his numb left arm and the aching tear in his side, he had to venture. Those hoppled stallions! He slashed at the rawhide hopples, freed them. With the other horses, at least thirty of them mares and bearing the burrs and signs of range freedom on their coats, the stallions snorted and made for the gap in the brush corral.
Now angry yells from fatigue hoarsened redskins told that Joe himself was seen. A rifle cracked, and a portion of his Stetson brim was torn away. He fired twice—and then, as he thought the end had come, he saw a saddled and bridle-trailing pony at his side. His own horse, brought with the tide of equines!
Abandoning the fight, he raced for the pony, flung himself to his back, leaned forward to shield himself and gather the reins, and then dug spurred heels into the animal's flanks. It jumped ahead, and followed the Morgans and the wild herd through the break in the corral.
The Indians, tired to the marrow by their relay chase, disappointed, and probably shocked by sight of their three dead comrades, did not even pursue. Four hours later, seeing the back country free of dust clouds, Rosebud Joe detached his lariat and built himself a loop. Up there ahead was a horse he had been watching for hours, a staggering, almost collapsed wild stallion taller than the Morgans. A horse that breathed loudly through blood-red nostrils, and whose mane and tail were
