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Updated: June 27, 2025
The Purdee grasp was gentler on the little girl's arm. This was due not to fraternal feeling so much as to loyalty to the clan; "stack o' bones" though she was, they were Purdee bones. "Kem along," Ab Purdee exhorted her. "A baby ain't nuthin' extry, nohow" he glanced scoffingly at the infantile Grinnell. "The mountings air fairly a-roamin' with 'em."
He laughed silently a twinkling, wrinkling demonstration over all his broad face a laugh that was younger than the man, and would have befitted a square-faced boy. The youthful Purdee, expectant of a cuffing, stood his ground more doubtfully still under the insidious thrusts of this strange weapon, sarcasm.
"But we'd hit the trail for the rescue whether they were our cousins or not!" declared Bud Merkel, as he kicked his heels against the flanks of his pony, and sent that steady-going animal forward with a rush. "Whoa there, son, whoa there!" advised Snake Purdee who was in leadership of the party. "That's right," chimed in Yellin' Kid, with his usual strident tones.
The spectators still followed the surveyor and his Jacob's-staff, but Purdee lingered. He walked around the fence with a fierce, gloating eye, a panther-like, loping tread, as a beast might patrol a fold before he plunders it. All the venom of the old feud had risen to the opportunity. Here was his enemy at his mercy.
With the ramrod of his gun he sought to follow the fine tracings of the letters writ by the finger of the Lord on the stone tables that Moses flung down from the mountain-top in his wrath. With a devout thankfulness Purdee realized that he owned the land where they lay.
One reason for this was that caution was necessary, so that the presence of the skirmishing party be not disclosed, and another was that the information that it was Del Pinzo, and presumably his gang who had ambushed our friends, came as a great surprise. "Del Pinzo?" half gasped Snake Purdee as he ran to Dick's side. "Yes, there he is! See!"
"I dunno," said the advanced thinker, "ez I be s'prised enny ef Purdee, ez be huntin' up hyar so constant, hev got sorter teched in the head, ter take up sech a cur'ous notion 'bout'n them rocks." He glanced along the slope at the spot, visible now, where Moses flung the stone tables and they broke in twain.
They broke into wild exclamations. "Ye may hammer me out ez flat ez a skene," cried the blacksmith, "ef I don't b'lieve ez Purdee hev got 'em." "Naw, sir, naw!" cried another fervent amateur; "thar's the north.
"Waal, then," said the admonished orator, bluntly, "Grinnell 'lows ye don't own that thar lan' around them rocks on the bald, no more'n ye read enny writin' on 'em." "Not them rocks!" cried Purdee, standing suddenly erect "the tables o' the Law, writ with the finger o' the Lord an' Moses flung 'em down thar an' bruk 'em. All the kentry knows they air Moses' tables.
Thus, making merry as possible under the circumstances, the outfit from Diamond X resumed the trail, the more experienced cowboys looking here and there for any "sign" that would indicate the presence or the passage of the Yaquis. As a matter of fact Snake Purdee did not expect to "meet up" with any of the Indians for some time.
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