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Updated: June 14, 2025
Tell my father that an' ask him to forgive me if he can. That wuz all she said. Ranse Roush hit her horse with a switch an' sez, 'Yo' kin tell him all that yore own self soon as you git home. I reckon I wuz the lastest person she spoke to alive." They left the old woman staring after them with her mouth open. It could have been only a few minutes later that they reached Quicksand Creek.
The man made a bolt for the bend in the cañon a hundred yards away. Instantly the rifle leaped to the shoulder of the boy. "Right in front of you, Roush," he prophesied. The bullet kicked up the dust at the feet of the running man. The nerve of Roush failed him and he took cover again behind a scrub live-oak.
"I ain't got any mother, Dave." Again she choked in her throat. "You wouldn't take advantage of me, would you?" He protested hotly. Desiring only to be convinced, 'Lindy took one last precaution. "Swear you'll do right by me always." He swore it. She put her hand in his and he led her to the boat. Ranse Roush was at the oars. Before he had taken a dozen strokes a wave of terror swept over her.
A man was stooped over it cooking breakfast. The heart of the fugitive lost a beat, then raced wildly. The camper was Devil Dave Roush. A rifle lay beside him. His revolver was in a cartridge belt that had been tossed on a boulder within reach of his hand. Clanton wriggled back without a sound from the edge of the cliff and rose to his feet. A savage light of triumph blazed in his eyes.
If Roush was the man who had tiptoed toward the horse in the pines, why had he not made sure first by shooting Albeen while he slept? There was no absolute answer to that. But it might be that the one-armed man had been dozing lightly and that Roush had not the nerve to take a chance. For if his first shot failed to kill, the betrayed man could still drop him.
Dave Roush was a large, well-shouldered man, impressive in spite of his homespun. If he carried himself with a swagger there was no lack of boldness in him to back it. His long hair was straight and black and coarse, a derivative from the Indian strain in his blood. "Git my note?" he asked. She nodded sullenly. 'Lindy had met Dave Roush at a dance up on Lonesome where she had no business to be.
He left town sooner than he had intended because Roush had escaped during the night and was probably on his way into the hills to warn the rustlers. Get them in a talkative mood and old-timers who took part in it will still tell the story of that man-drive in the mountains. Riders combed the draws and the buttes, eyes and ears alert for those who might lie hidden on the rim rocks or in the cactus.
"I've known fellows before that got all filled up with talk an' had to steam off about every so often," commented Albeen to the world at large. "Meanin' me?" Albeen carefully raked a live coal from the fire and pressed it down into the bowl of his pipe. The eyes in his leathery, brown face had grown hard as jade. For some time he and Dave Roush had been ready for an explosion.
"We do," answered Billie, and his voice was just as cold. It had in it the snap of a whiplash. "You came in here to pick trouble with us. Your pardner Clanton, whatever his name is gave it out straight that he was goin' to kill Roush." "He didn't mention you, did he?" "The Roush brothers were in our party. We ride for the Lazy S M. We don't make distinctions." "Don't you? Listen," advised Prince.
His grim face told Roush all he needed to know. There had been a time when Roush, full of physical life and energy, had boasted that he feared no living man. In his cups he still bragged of his bad record, of his accuracy as a gunman, of his gameness. But he knew, and his associates suspected, that Devil Dave had long since drunk up his courage. His nerves were jumpy and his heart bad.
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