another word was said while they hurried into their clothes. But as Curly passed out of the door he called back huskily. “Won’t forget what you done for us, Slats.”
Again their eyes met. Davis did not speak, but the chill look on his face told Flandrau that he had lost a friend.
The two young men ran down the back stairs, passed through the kitchen where a Chinese cook was getting breakfast, and out into the bright sunlight. Before they cut across to the corral their eyes searched for enemies. Nobody was in sight except the negro janitor of a saloon busy putting empty bottles into a barrel.
“Won’t do to be in any hurry. The play is we’re gentlemen of leisure, just out for an amble to get the mo’ning air,” Curly cautioned.
While they fed, watered, and saddled they swapped gossip with the wrangler. It would not do to leave the boy with a story of two riders in such a hurry to hit the trail that they could not wait to feed their bronchos. So they stuck it out while the animals ate, though they were about as contented as a two-pound rainbow trout on a hook. One of them was at the door all the time to make sure the way was still clear. At that they shaved it fine, for as they rode away two men were coming down the street.
“Kite Bonfils,” Curly called to his partner.
No explanation was needed. Bonfils was the foreman of the Bar Double M. He let out a shout as he caught sight of them and began to run forward. Simultaneously his gun seemed to jump from its holster.
Mac’s quirt sang and his pony leaped to a canter in two strides. A bullet zipped between them. Another struck the dust at their heels. Faintly there came to the fugitives the sound of the foreman’s impotent curses. They had escaped for the time.
Presently they passed the last barb wire fence and open country lay before them. It did not greatly matter which direction they followed, so long as they headed into the desert.
“What we’re looking for is a country filled with absentees,” Curly explained with a grin.
Neither of them had ever been in serious trouble before and both regretted the folly that had turned their drunken spree into a crime. Once or twice they came to the edge of a quarrel, for Mac was ready to lay the blame on his companion. Moreover, he had reasons why the thing he had done loomed up as a heinous offense.
His reasons came out before the camp fire on Dry Sandy that evening. They were stretched in front of it trying to make a smoke serve instead of supper. Mac broke a gloomy silence to grunt out jerkily a situation he could no longer keep to himself.
“Here’s where I get my walking papers I reckon. No rustlers need apply.”
Curly shot a slant glance at him. “Meaning—the girl?”
The redheaded puncher nodded. “She’ll throw me down sure. Why shouldn’t she? I tell you I’ve ruined my life. You’re only a kid. What you know about it?”
He took from his coat pocket a photograph and showed it to his friend. The sweet clean face of a wholesome girl smiled at Curly.
“She’s ce’tainly a right nice young lady. I’ll bet she stands by you all right. Where’s she live at?”
“Waits in a restaurant at Tombstone. We was going to be married soon as we had saved five hundred dollars.” Mac swallowed hard. “And I had to figure out this short cut to the money whilst I was drunk. As if she’d look at money made that way. Why, we’d a-been ready by Christmas if I’d only waited.”
Curly tried to cheer him up, but did not make much of a job at it. The indisputable facts were that Mac was an outlaw and a horse thief. Very likely a price was already on his head.
The redheaded boy rolled another cigarette despondently. “Sho! I’ve cooked my goose. She’ll not look at me—even if they don’t send me to the pen.” In a moment he added huskily, staring into the deepening darkness: “And she’s the best ever. Her name’s Myra Anderson.”
Abruptly Mac got up and disappeared in the night, muttering something about looking after the horses. His partner understood well enough what was the matter. The redheaded puncher was in a stress of emotion, and like the boy he was he did not want Curly to know it.
Flandrau pretended to be asleep when Mac returned half an hour later.
They slept under a live oak with the soundness of healthy youth. For the time they forgot their troubles. Neither of them knew that as the hours slipped away red tragedy was galloping closer to them.
CHAPTER II
CAMPING WITH OLD MAN TROUBLE
The sun was shining in his face when Curly wakened. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. Mac was nowhere in sight. Probably he had gone to get the horses.
A sound broke the stillness of the desert. It might have been the explosion of a giant firecracker, but Flandrau knew it was nothing so harmless. He leaped to his feet, and at the same instant Mac came running over the brow of the hill. A smoking revolver was in his hand.
From behind the hill a gun cracked—then a second—and a third. Mac stumbled over his feet and pitched forward full length on the ground. His friend ran toward him, forgetting the revolver that lay in its holster under the live oak. Every moment he expected to see Mac jump up, but the figure stretched beside the cholla never moved. Flandrau felt the muscles round his heart tighten. He had seen sudden death before, but never had it come so near home.
A bullet sent up a spurt of dust in front of him, another just on the left. Riders were making a half circle around the knoll and closing in on him. In his right mind Curly would have been properly frightened. But now he thought only of Mac lying there so still in the sand. Right into the fire zone he ran, knelt beside his partner, and lifted the red-thatched head. A little hole showed back of the left ear and another at the right temple. A bullet had plowed through the boy’s skull.
Softly Flandrau put the head back in the sand and rose to his feet. The revolver of the dead puncher was in his hand. The attackers had stopped shooting, but when they saw him rise a rifle puffed once more. The riders were closing in on him now. The nearest called to him to surrender. Almost at the same time a red hot pain shot through the left arm of the trapped rustler. Someone had nipped him from the rear.
Curly saw red. Surrender nothing! He would go down fighting. As fast as he could blaze he emptied Mac’s gun. When the smoke cleared the man who had ordered him to give up was slipping from his horse. Curly was surprised, but he knew he must have hit him by chance.
“We got him. His gun’s empty,” someone shouted.
Cautiously they closed in, keeping him covered all the time. Of a sudden the plain tilted up to meet the sky. Flandrau felt himself swaying on his feet. Everything went black. The boy had fainted.
When he came to himself strange faces were all around him, and there were no bodies to go with them. They seemed to float about in an odd casual sort of way.
