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Two minutes later, during which the nasal howls from the boat were utterly ignored, the acting chief engineer hauled himself along the rail hand over hand to windward, ducking below the canvas guard as a more than usually big comber split against the Puncher's side and hove itself to heaven.
"Oh, muzzle him, some one!" ordered the commander, and the jiggling, complaining engines danced ahead, the horrid gray beneath the pilot's ebony notwithstanding. "By the deep four!" warned Joe Byng in a level sing-song. The two gongs clanged like an echo to him, and the Puncher's speed was reduced at once to her point, of minimum stability.
The girl flamed with indignant anger. "You coward! You saw him come up, after all that time down in those fearful depths after fighting his way all those miles along the terrible river yet you dare not go down! You coward! you quitter!" The puncher's face turned a sickly yellow, and he seemed to shrink in on himself. His voice sank to a husky whisper: "You can say that, Miss Chuckie!
The rider held up the lamb, jabbered a sentence of broncho Spanish at the spot where the man had been, put down his bleating burden, and cantered back to his own side of the river without unnecessary delay. No bullets had yet been fired in the Cullison-Fendrick feud, but a "greaser" was liable to do anything, according to the old puncher's notion.
"Where's that sneaking greaser?" he asked in a low tone, his eyes shifting nervously to the open door. "Out saddling her horse." "Oh! Well, listen." The young puncher's voice sank almost to a whisper. "That sendin' me down to Las Vegas was a plant; I'm shore of it. My orders was to sleep days an' patrol around nights to get a line on who was after the cattle.
There's just one way to deal with skunks, and that is, don't fool with them." The cowman accepted this as conclusive. But when, a little later, Ashton met Gowan at the supper table he was rendered uneasy by the cold glint in the puncher's gray eyes.
White foam was boiling in among the dirty welter, and the Puncher's bow pitched suddenly as the first big bar wave lifted her; a second later her propellers chug-chug-chugged in surface spume as she kicked upward like a porpoise diving. "Oh, lordy, lordy, lordy!" groaned the pilot. "This he-ah watah's full of sharks, an' that's the bar! You're on the bar now, Captain, sah!" "By the mark three!"
The latter had assured the range boss that he appreciated the puncher's interest and would be glad to go over some of his poems. Therefore Hollis was not surprised when in the afternoon he saw Ace loping his pony down the Coyote trail toward the Hazelton cabin. Ace's approach was diffident, though ambition urged him on.
Young Perch was killed. Realise the thing! He was never going to see Young Perch again. He was never going to see old Mrs. Perch again. He was never to come into Puncher's again. Another place of his life was to be walled up. His home like an empty house; the office like an empty house; now no refuge here. Things were crowding in about him, things were closing in upon him.
"How about his drawing on me and how about your yearling? That bullet went just where it ought to 've gone with his hat down on his head." There was no jesting even of the grimmest quality in the puncher's look and tone. He was very cool and quiet and his Colt's was leveled for another shot. The hunter thrust up his hands as high as he could reach.
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