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Ah, God A'mighty, and that dog of his got Tommy before I could pull a gun! Rufe, I could kill every sheepman in the Four Peaks for this every dam' one of 'em and the first dog that comes in sight of this ranch will stop a thirty-thirty." He stopped and turned away, cursing and muttering to himself.
"Here, in the corner," said a cowboy. "Must 'a' been him that got Wright and Bradley. The old man only cut loose twict afore the kid come. Look at this!" And dragging Young Pete to his feet, the cowboy took the carbine from him and pointed to the three thirty-thirty shells on the cabin floor. The men were silent. Presently one of them laughed. Despite Pete's terror, he recognized that laugh.
Yet they were both of ordinary caliber. Probably nine out of ten men who carried rifles used those of thirty-thirty caliber. Bullets differed only in jacketing and the shape of the nose. A Winchester was round, with little of the softer metal projecting from the jacket, while a U.
Pete was repaid a thousand-fold for his efforts by the old man's occasional: "Couldn't 'a' done it any better myself, pardner." For Annersley seldom called the boy "Pete" now, realizing that "pardner" meant so much more to him. Pete had his rifle an old carbine, much scratched and battered by the brush and rock a thirty-thirty the old man had purchased from a cowboy in Concho.
The sheriff was no longer puzzled about the two rifles having been used. The cowboy had told him that two of the T-Bar-T men had been killed. That in each instance a thirty-thirty, soft-nosed slug had done the business. Annersley's rifle was an old forty-eighty-two, shooting a solid lead bullet.
I'm surely done talkin' to you." Dade turned and walked away. Sandy covered him. "Not in the back," said McHale. Immediately afterward a thirty-thirty struck a rock in front of them, glancing off at an angle, wailing away into the distance. Sandy McCrae, lying at full length peering along the slim barrel of his weapon, pressed the trigger and swore in disappointment. "Centred a stump," he said.
There, just behind him, barefooted, bent almost double, crouching to leap upon him, a great Chinaman, a long, curved knife clenched in his hand, was not three feet away. Even as he swung about the giant Asiatic sprang forward, the knife flashing up and down. Conniston struck with his rifle the range was too short for him to use the thirty-thirty save as a club.
Its nose was spread to the size of a half- dollar, its butt-end, steel-jacketed, was undamaged. He compared it with a cartridge from Smoke's belt. "That's plain enough evidence, Stranger, to satisfy a blind man. It's soft-nosed an' steel-jacketed; yourn is soft-nosed and steel- jacketed. It's thirty-thirty; yourn is thirty-thirty.
"A forty-five." The officers of the law glanced at each other knowingly, and the deputy turned back toward the ranch. "The deceased was shot with a thirty-thirty," observed the coroner briefly, and there the matter was dropped.
Old man Annersley was at the back of the cabin preparing supper. One of the riders, a man named Gary, said something to his companion about "running the old man out of the country." Young Pete paused in his task. "You can't bluff him so easy," offered the companion. "But a thirty-thirty kin talk business," said the man Gary, and he laughed. Pete never forgot the remark nor the laugh.
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