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Gowan was the first to look away. The incident passed so swiftly that only Knowles observed the outflash of enmity. His words indicated that he had anticipated the puncher's attitude. He addressed Blake seriously: "Kid has been with us ever since he was a youngster and has always made my interests his own.
Whenever he uttered protest they held him stretched over a roll of blankets and thrashed him woefully with a pair of leather leggings. And all this meant that Curly had won his spurs, that he was receiving the puncher's accolade. Nevermore would they be polite to him. But he would be their "pardner" and stirrup-brother, foot to foot.
When they came up he nodded carelessly in response to Ashton's studiously polite greeting, "Good day, Mr. Gowan," and turned to loosen the cinch of his saddle. "You've been riding some," remarked the girl, looking at the puncher's heaving, lathered horse. "Jumped that wolf ran him," replied Gowan, as he lifted off his saddle and deftly tossed it up on the top rail of the corral.
And thirty minutes later, as the Puncher's launch put off with Curley and Joe Byng comfortably seated in the stern, it was obvious to any one who cared to look that Scamp was the happiest and healthiest terrier in Asia. "Now, I wonder what they did to him," mused the Puncher's commander, watching from beneath his awning. "Those two men live up to the name they brought aboard!
He hung the tarp in a conspicuous place and retired to rest. The following morning his efforts were applauded with much picturesque expletive, and even criticism was evoked by a lean puncher who insisted "that the tall guy might be a good cook all right, but he sure didn't know how to spell 'calf." Naturally the puncher's erudition leaned toward cattle and the range.
Blake looked at it thoughtfully. After some moments, he placed the sack where it had lain at first, and upset the keg of spikes on top of it. He then carefully examined Gowan's saddle; but it told him nothing. He shook his head doubtfully, and returned to camp. Going quietly around to Gowan, he set down the lantern close before the puncher's face and stopped to light a cigar.
"Port you-ah hel-um, sah!" yelled the pilot in an ecstasy of fright. "Starboard a little," came the quiet command. Curley Crothers moved his wheel and the Puncher's bow yawed twenty feet, as if Providence had pushed her. "Gawd A'mighty!" murmured Joe Byng, gazing open-mouthed at fifty feet of jagged rock that grinned up suddenly three waves away.
But Ashton did not see the strange act that checked the puncher's vengeful shot. While the girl was yet clinging to Blake, he had turned and fled along the edge of the ravine, for the moment stark mad with rage and despair. He rushed off without a cry, and the others were themselves far too surcharged with emotion to heed his going until he had disappeared around a turn in the ravine.
Should they slay, there was the Puncher to be reckoned with; and the Puncher's port quick-firers could be seen commanding Adra by any man who cared to climb the wall. Besides, an Arab's hospitality is proverbial. He very seldom kills a visitor on sight. On the other hand a man, and particularly a British sailor, who runs has reason, as a rule. Therefore these two men were evidently guilty.
Half the rooms of Puncher's were so filled with furniture that no more furniture, and scarcely a living person, could be got in; and half the rooms were so filled with boxes, packages, bundles, trunks, crates, and stacks of newspapers that no furniture at all could be got in. Every room was known to Mrs. Perch and to Young Perch by the name of some article it contained and Mrs.
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