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Updated: June 18, 2025
The bank there was pretty steep, and, unable to stop, I kept on like a barrel going down-bill. The thought of rolling into the spring filled me with horror. Suddenly I bumped hard into something that checked me. It was a log of firewood, and in one end stuck the big knife which Herky-Jerky used to cut meat. Instantly I conceived the idea of cutting my bonds with this knife.
Herky-Jerky soon had me sputtering, gasping, choking. When he finally pulled me out of the hole I was all but drowned. "You bow-legged beggar!" shouted Dick, "I'll fix you for that." "Whar's my gun?" yelled Herky, as I fell to the ground. "I lost it," I panted. He began to rave. Then I half swooned, and when sight and hearing fully returned I was lying in the cave on my blankets.
In one corner of the back wall a rotten log had crumbled, and here it was plain to all eyes that Greaser had slipped out. I remembered that on this side of the cabin there was quite a thick growth of young pine. Greaser had been able to conceal himself as he crawled toward the horses, and had probably been seen at the last moment. Herky-Jerky was the only one to make comment.
All at once the voices of men made me sit up with a violent start. Who could they be? Had Hiram met a ranger? I began to shake a little, and was about to creep to the door when I heard the clink of stirrups and soft thud of hoofs. Then followed more voices, and last a loud volley of curses. "Herky-Jerky!" I gasped, and looked about wildly. I had no time to dash out of the door.
Then, with his beady little eyes as keen and cold as flint, he said: "Buell, Leslie knows you daren't harm the kid; an' as fer bullets, he'll take good care where he stings 'em. This deal of ours begins to look like a wild-goose stunt. It never was safe, an' now it's worse." Here was even Herky-Jerky harping on Buell's situation. To me it did not appear much more serious than before.
Herky-Jerky yelled, as he jumped between Buell and me. Buell's breath was a hiss, and the words he bit between his clinched teeth were unintelligible. In that moment he would have killed me. Herky-Jerky met his onslaught, and flung him back. Then, with his hand on the butt of his revolver, he spoke: "Buell, hyar's where you an' me split. You've bungled your big deal.
We branched off the main trail and took a steeper one leading up the slope. We rode for hours. There were moments when I reeled in my saddle, but for the greater while I stood my pain and weariness well enough. Some time in the afternoon a shrill whistle ahead attracted my attention. I made out two horsemen waiting on the trail. "Huh! about time!" growled Bill. "Hyar's Buell an' Herky-Jerky."
"I'm all there as a roper!" he said, pulling the lasso tight round my middle. The men all laughed as I tumbled over in the gravel. "Better keep a half-hitch on the colt," remarked Bud. So they left the lasso fast about my waist, and it trailed after me as I walked. Herky-Jerky put me to carrying Dick's breakfast from the campfire up into the cave. This I did with alacrity.
"Well, anyway," I went on, "somebody cut these ropes. I'm mighty sore and uncomfortable." Herky-Jerky did not wait for permission; he untied me, and helped me to my feet. I was rather unsteady on my legs at first, and my injured arm felt like a board. It seemed dead; but after I had moved it a little the pain came back, and it had apparently come to stay.
Greaser surely thought he had fallen in with his evil spirit, for he howled to the saints to save him. Herky-Jerky was the only one of his companions brave enough to start to help him. "The cabin's full of b'ars!" he yelled. At his cry the bear leaped out of the cloud of dust, and shot across the threshold like black lightning. In his onslaught upon Greaser he had broken his halter.
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