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Was that Joe's pony galloping across the field? Lem turned. No; the pony was a strange one. And the rider? Bub Quinn had leaped to the ground not ten feet from him. He had flung the rein over the neck of his steaming bronco; but he himself was as calm and as cool as though he had not ridden twenty miles before sunrise at a break-neck gallop.
Bub Russell paid the boatman and stepped on deck. The anchor was forgotten. A mighty cheer went up from the men, and almost before he could catch his breath he was on the shoulders of the captain, surrounded by his mates, and endeavoring to answer twenty questions to the second.
Aroused by the shouts of the soldiers over Bub's appearance, he had opened his eyes, and, imagining that the Indians were assailing the cabin, murmured, in a clear, distinct voice, "Pull the string, Bub!" Mr. Cowles farmer, grocer, postmaster, and money-lender drew his chair to the fire.
He didn't look so wild or bearish after all very much like other men, Bub concluded, and the sailors were much the same as all other man-of-war's men he had ever known. Nevertheless, as his feet struck the steel deck of the cruiser, he felt as if he had entered the portals of a prison. For a few minutes he was left unheeded. The sailors hoisted the boat up, and swung it in on the davits.
And he said he was going right by there on business, and he would be glad to show it to me. So we walked along in that direction. It seems that Bub Smith saved the life of his little sister jumped off into the water when she was most drowned, and dragged her out. And from that time the two families have thought the world of each other. That is what made him so awful good to me.
Even the officer, who ordered him taken below and locked up, could not quite conceal the laughter in his eyes. Bub thought often in the days of confinement which followed, that they were not very angry with him for what he had done. He was not far from right.
He saw, at that instant, his sister Sarah start from the store for the cabin, and that the fiendish savage did not notice Bub's escape, in his eagerness to intercept the girl; so that Bub, terrified by the report of the gun, and at seeing his sister struck down by Yellow Bank, dragged himself off in the direction of Charlie's tree, not seeming to know but that he was going towards the cabin.
He folded the letter, placed it inside his Scotch cap and stowed the money carefully in his pocket. "Don't let any of the folks see you if yon can help it," warned Sarah; "and, whatever happens, don't say anything about that telegram to a living soul. Only see that it's sent." "I'm wise," answered Bub and a moment later he started the car and rolled away down the road.
Lem Keith was shuddering from head to foot, and his lips were stiff and blue, yet there was an odd, masterful ring in his voice as he cried, "Make haste, will you, and shoot!" A shot rang out, and Lem fell, pierced, not by Bub Quinn's bullet, but by the living horror of death. On the furrows beside him Bub Quinn lay stretched, with blood oozing from his right shoulder.
And then, in the instant that a wild new hope is lighting up his face, the cayote turns and smiles blandly upon him once more, and with a something about it which seems to say: "Well, I shall have to tear myself away from you, bub business is business, and it will not do for me to be fooling along this way all day" and forthwith there is a rushing sound, and the sudden splitting of a long crack through the atmosphere, and behold that dog is solitary and alone in the midst of a vast solitude!
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