Mavericks

"Hurry the boys, Brad! Hell's broke loose!" he called to his companion.

The town was alarmed and buzzing like a hornet's nest. Soon they would feel the sting of the swarm unless they beat an immediate retreat. One sweep of his eyes told the bandy-legged fellow as much. He could hear voices crying the alarm, could see men running to and fro farther down the street. Even in the second he stood there a revolver began potting at him.

"Back in a moment," he cried to the wrangler, and disappeared within to shout an urgent warning to the looters.

Three men came up from the vault, each carrying a sack. The teller was pushed into the street first, and the rest followed. A scattering fire began to converge at once upon them. The roan with the white stockings showed a red ridge across its flank where a bullet had furrowed a path.

The teller dropped, wounded by his friends. Two of the robbers loaded the horses, while the others answered the townsmen. In the inevitable delay of getting started, every moment seemed an hour to the harassed outlaws.

But at last they were in the saddle and galloping down the street, firing right and left as they went. At the next street crossing two men, one fat and the other lean, came running, revolvers in hands, to intercept them. They were too late. Before they reached the corner the outlaws had galloped past in a cloud of white dust, still flinging bullets at the invisible they were escaping.

The big lean cow-puncher stopped with an oath as the riders disappeared. "Nothing doing, Budd," he called to the fat man. "The show's moved on to a new stand."

Jim Budd, puffing heavily and glistening with perspiration, nodded the answer he could not speak. Presently he got out what he wanted to say.

"Notice that leading hawss on the nigh side, Slim?" he asked.

"So you noticed it, too, Jim. I could swear to that roan with the four stockings. It's the hawss Mr. Larrabie Keller mavericks around on, durn his forsaken hide! And the man on it wore a polka-dot bandanna. So does Keller. He'll have to go some to explain away that. I reckon the others must be nesters from Bear Creek, too."

"We've got 'em where the wool's short this time," Budd agreed. "They been shootin' around right promiscuous. If anybody's dead, then Keller has put a rope round his own neck."

Men were already saddling and mounting for the first unorganized pursuit. Slim and his friend joined these, and cantered down the dusty street scarce ten minutes after the robbers.