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Updated: August 20, 2024
Until the Utes were out of gunshot Bob felt very uneasy. It was not many years since the Meeker massacre and the ambushing of Major Thornburg's troops on Milk Creek. Reeves and Hollister were in the bunkhouse when Bob entered it just before supper. He heard Dud's voice. "... don't like a hair of his red haid, but that's how it'll be far as I'm concerned." There was a moment's awkward silence.
The big man's hand groped at his belt. Brown fingers closed on the butt of a forty-five. Instantly both rescuers were galvanized to life. Dud's foot scraped into the air a cloud of sand and dust as Bob dived forward. He plunged at Houck a fraction of a second behind his friend. Into the blue sky a bullet went singing.
Dud's first thought was that the troops had been drawn into a trap. Every man who had been carried over the edge of the mesa by the impetus of the charge was already unhorsed. Several were apparently dead. One was scudding for cover. Dud drew back promptly. He did not care to stand silhouetted against the sky-line for sharpshooters.
And then, as the deadly clutch only tightened, Dan did what all Wharf Rats knew they must do in such cases struck out with the full strength of his hardy young fist, and, knocking the clinging Dud's fast-failing wits completely out of him, swam back with his helpless burden to the "Sary Ann." "The Lord, matey, but you are a game un!" said Captain Jeb, as he and Jim dragged Dud aboard.
"Dud's bettin' he'll get the sky pilot to race him from here to Monty's place," explained Reeves. "Stick around. He'll want to borrow a coupla dollars from you to buy the drinks." It was Sunday afternoon. The missionary was returning from South Park, where he had been conducting a morning service. He was riding Tex Lindsay's Blue Streak, borrowed for the occasion.
But a fellow's got to look out for number one. I'd let him have it soon as I seen him. Right off the reel." "Would you?" "Surest thing you know. He's a bad actor, that fellow is." "If I went to the marshal " Dud's eye held derision. "What good'd that do? Simp ain't gonna draw cards till after some one's been gunned. He don't claim to be no mind-reader, Simp don't."
Dud's observation, when he and Bob took the back trail along the river to find the missing bronco, confirmed that of Buck Hawks. He found the place where a horse had clawed its way out of the stream to the clay bank. From here it had wandered into the sage and turned toward the home ranch. The tracks showed that Powder River was moving slowly, grazing as it went.
The rector's son had died of pneumonia and their baby was just recovering from it and the girl herself never did get over the strain. Somebody carried her home to die, which it seems she took some years doing. Dud's sweetheart the other side of the rectory wall was her daughter.
It was bad iron, not fit to be used; indeed no iron, except what was smelted with charcoal of wood, could be good. To smelt it with coal was a dangerous innovation, and could only result in some great public calamity. The ironmasters even appealed to King James to put a stop to Dud's manufacture, alleging that his iron was not merchantable.
This is Beach Cliff, where we have to take a sailboat to Killykinick. And," Dud went on, with deepening disgust, "I bet it's that old tub that is signalling to us now." Dan's eyes, following Dud's sullen gaze, saw, among the gaily painted pleasure craft moored at the wharfs, a clumsy little boat with rusty sides and dingy sail.
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