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Tom Hargus turned Whetstone to face back the way they had come, threw the reins over the saddle-horn, rode up so close Lambert could feel his breath in his face. "You made me brush off a nigger's hat when you had the drop on me, and carry a post five miles. That's the shoulder I carried it on!" He drove his knife into Lambert's right shoulder with the words. The steel grated on bone.
"Oh, that's soon remedied. Reddy will promise to land that sheep here for you in double-quick order, eh?" Reddy was already fastening one end of his lariat to a projecting stone that resembled a saddle-horn. This done, he tried it, to make sure that it would hold. Then he tossed the balance of the rope, loop and all, over the edge. "Does it reach down?" asked Mr. Mabie.
I gits down me rope and coils it, and seen it was old and pretty shaky in spots, and me saddle a single cinch, an' me pony about 700 again a 1,200 lbs. stallion, an' I sez to meself, sez I: 'Tain't no use, I'll only break me cinch and git throwed an' lose me saddle. So I hits the saddle-horn a crack with the hondu, and I wish't you'd a seen that mustang.
What a little beauty! in the third, and from there on till the wind-up spends most of his time running around in circles because the beautiful flower of the rancho gives him the bad eye?" He twisted sidewise in the saddle, took a half-hitch with the reins around the saddle-horn, and proceeded to manufacture a cigarette while he went on with the burlesque.
"That's how I figured it. Now let's trot on; we ain't gaining nothing by sittin' our saddles here. We can talk while we travel." There was a few moments of silence, both men evidently busied with their thoughts; then Westcott asked: "What is your idea, Dan?" The marshal rode steadily, humped up over his saddle-horn, his eyes on the uncertainties in front.
Taterleg rode up to the fence-cutters and disarmed them, holding his gun comfortably in their ribs as he worked with swift hand. The rifle he handed down to the old negro, who was now on his feet, and who took it with a bow and a grave face across which a gleam of satisfaction flashed. The holsters with the revolvers in them he passed to the Duke, who hung them on his saddle-horn.
Wrapt in admiration of the scene, the mist-clouds floating lazily upward from the cañon, the silver ribbon far away that revealed the winding river, and the songs of birds coming from a hundred leafy retreats on the hillsides, the horseman gave a deep sigh, as though memories most sad were awakened in his breast by the scene, and then dismounting began to unwrap a lariat from his saddle-horn.
As she stared, he took off his sombrero, rested his hand on the saddle-horn, and looked haggardly, eagerly, up the trail toward the house. His face was whiter, thinner, worn by protracted mental pain, but it was the beautiful, living face of Pierre.
He fired with both hands, and did not cease until he had emptied his weapons and riddled the coach. Then he unslung his rifle from his saddle-horn and cautiously approached, ready to fire at the first sign of danger to himself. But he had done his work well, and he had nothing to fear, so advancing to the coach, found that it was empty.
His mustang was moving with great difficulty; he uncoiled his lariat from the saddle-horn, and, selecting the most open space, tied one end to the trunk of a large tree, the forty feet of horsehair rope giving the animal a sufficient degree of grazing freedom.
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