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"Oh, you Ledger fellows are always giving the college yell for each other," said McHale, impatiently voicing the local jealousy of The Ledger's recognized esprit de corps. "I've seen bigger rockets than him come down in the ash-heap." "He won't," prophesied Tommy Burt, The Ledger's humorous specialist. "He'll go up and stay up. High! He's got the stuff."
Out of the dead silence came Shiller's voice from the door: "I'll fill the first man that makes a move plumb full of buckshot. If there's any shootin' in here, I'm doin' it myself." He held a pump gun at his shoulder, the muzzle dominating the group. "You, Tom," he continued, "you said you wouldn't make trouble." "Am I makin' it?" asked McHale. "Are you makin' it?" Shiller repeated.
"Casey." McHale read Casey's warning as to Dade, and whistled softly, passing the letter to Sandy. "So this here Dade makes it a feud, does he?" he said meditatively. "All right, he can have it that way. Same time, I'm goin' to keep out of trouble long as I can. I'll stay cached mighty close, and I'll run like blazes before I'll fight. Simon, how'd you find this camp?"
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.
Swiftly he swung out the cylinder of the weapon, ejected the empty shells, refilled the chambers, and snapped it shut. Shiller's door opened. McHale covered it instantly, but it was Shiller himself. "So you done it, did you?" he said. "Sure," said McHale. "He comes a-shootin', and I gets him. Likewise I gets them two tillikums of his if they want it that way."
The two men looked at each other. The same thought was present in the mind of each. It was barely possible that a land or rock slide somewhere high upstream had dammed or diverted the current; but it was most improbable. The cause was nearer to seek, the agency extremely human. McHale bit into fresh consolation and spat in the direction of the inadequate dam.
"I dunno who our friends are," said McHale, as they rode out of camp, "but if it's this here Dade bunch, say, what a surprise they'd have give me all by myself. I can just see me gettin' up in time to fall down." "They've got no license to chase us all over," said Sandy. "We don't have to stand for it, do we? How'd it be if we held up their camp?
"And which is your room?" Wade asked. "I'm bunking in one of the other buildings." "What? We're putting you out of your own house!" Wade exclaimed. "That won't do, Casey, really it won't. We won't let you." "Of course not," his wife concurred. "Indeed we won't," said Clyde. But Casey was firm. He explained that he came and went at all hours, rose early, had to be where he could confer with McHale.
He paused abruptly. Out of the distance came the unmistakable sound of a blast, closely followed by a second. "Another dam!" Casey exclaimed. "That's Oscar's, or Wyndham's. Our own medicine, sure enough!" "If I can put a gunsight on to one of them fellers I'll fix him so's he won't hold medicine nohow," said McHale savagely. "No use followin' the river.
McHale laughed, and then swore as a sharp fragment of rock ripped his cheek. "Hit you?" "Nope. Rock sliver. I'll bet their guns is gettin' hot. This won't last." The fusillade ceased. McHale shoved his rifle barrel through a crevice. "Maybe some gent will stick out his head to see how many corpses there is of us. This light's gettin' durn bad.
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