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The crowd fairly went wild with enthusiasm at her feat, as she mounted again, leaving the steer to the tender mercies of the cow-punchers, who flocked about her. Then she dashed out of the arena, waving her hat in recognition of the applause.
"I seen a little mix-up there myself in the early eighties. Five cow-punchers, friends they was, had been visitin' town. One feller, playful-like, takes another feller's quirt that's a whip. An' the other feller, playful-like, says, 'Give it back. Then they tussles for it, an' rolls on the ground. I was laughin', as was everybody, when, suddenly, the owner of the quirt thumps his friend.
But, if they could only gain the shelter of the overgrown part of the gulch, they might still be safe. It was in this extremity that Jack bethought himself of an old trick he had heard the cow-punchers talk of at his father's ranch. They had used it in old frontier days, when the Indians were thick and hostile. The deception was a simple one.
Who, indeed, would pay good money for a dead Gringo, especially after he was dead? And there were three cow-punchers holding a herd of 6-X cattle up north, an hour or so from the town. They wanted to buy steers from Senor Rodriguez, but said that he was a robber and threatened to cut his ears off. Cannot a man name his own price?
Cow-punchers, waiting for just such manifestations of individuality, whirled after them like comets, and soon they were again in the pawing, heaving, sweltering bunch to which they belonged.
"If I had thought of it," she said, with a faint, uncertain smile, "I should have exacted a promise that you and he should be friends." He spoke sharply. "Who? Me? That's a good 'un, by Jove! You may as well understand me, dear, once and for all. I don't make friends of cow-punchers of that sort." "I do," she said, coldly, turning again to her note-book.
Once we saw a badger zigzagging along a side-hill, and Frosty whipped out a big revolver one of those "Colt 45's," I suppose and shot it; he said in extenuation that they play the very devil with the range, digging holes for cow-punchers to break their necks over. I was surprised at Frosty; there he had been armed, all the time, and I never guessed it.
Cow-punchers rubbed elbows with Indians and Mexicans, and the few tourists that were present were delighted with the picturesque scene. The town was full of fakirs and before one of them stood a group of cow-punchers, apparently drinking in the words of a barker. "Right this way, gents, and see the woman who don't eat. Lived for two years without food, gents. Right this way, gents.
His pop might be besieged in the cabin, alone and fighting a cowardly bunch of cow-punchers who dare not face him in the open day. But what if his pop were not there? The thought struck him cold. What would he do if he made a run for the cabin and found it locked and no one there? All at once Pete realized that it was his home and his stock and hay that were in danger.
According to all the traditions and customs of the range, both of which he knew well, somewhere between him and Grant was a posse of hard-riding cow-punchers, all anxious and eager for a glance at him over their sights. In his mind's eye he could see them, silent, grim, tenacious, reeling off the miles on that distance-eating lope. He had stolen a horse, and that meant death if they caught him.
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