"First you, then me! You know the Western saying for an Indian fight: Always save your last shot for yourself!"

There was nothing of despair or lack of resolution; he spoke as speaks one who but gives a promise to one who has reason to receive it. He offered it without fear to one who accepted it without fear, and when he had spoken Ruth Pemberton felt as cheerfully light as a bird. She had a desire to seize on the Winchester and take her stand with Mr. Masterson.

But her ignorance of Winchesters was there to baffle her; moreover Mr.

Masterson, as though he read her impulse, interfered.

"Stay where you are!" he commanded. From where she crouched in the buffalo wallow, Ruth Pemberton heard a whirl of yells, and the gra.s.s-m.u.f.fled drumming of many hoofs; and the yells and the hoof-beats were bearing down upon her with the rush of a tempest. There came a rattle of rifles, and the chuck! chuck! of bullets into the soft earth.

In the midst of the din and the clamour she heard the bold roar of the buffalo gun. Then she saw Mr. Masterson s.n.a.t.c.h up the Winchester, and spring clear of the buffalo wallow to the flat, gra.s.sy ground in front.

Feeling nothing, knowing nothing beyond a resolution to be near him, live or die, she was out of the buffalo wallow as soon as was he, and on her knees at his feet. She could seize on no one element as distinct and separate from a whirling whole, made up of blur and smoke and yell and rifle crash, with feathers dancing and little ponies charging like meteors! She was sure only of the rock-bound fact to which she clung that Mr. Masterson never moved from where he stood. She heard the spitting, whip-like crack of the Winchester, so different from the menacing voice of the buffalo gun, as working it with the rapidity of a bell-punch he fired it faster than she could count.

The thing was on and by and over in a moment; the charging Cheyennes went to right and left, unable to ride up against that tide of death which set so fiercely in their faces. Nine Cheyennes made that charge upon the buffalo wallow; Ruth Pemberton counted but four to flash to the rear at the close. The four never paused; their hearts had turned weak, and they kept on along the river's bank, until at a low place they rode in and went squattering across. Five riderless ponies, running wild and lost, gave chase with neighs of protest at being left behind.

Out in front, one of the five Cheyennes who had been shot from his saddle in the charge raised himself, wounded, on his elbow. Mr.

Masterson, who had recovered his Sharp's, sent a bullet into his head.

Ruth Pemberton, even through the tingling trance of battle that still wrapped her close, turned cold.

"What else?" inquired Mr. Masterson. "We don't run any Red-Cross outfit in the Panhandle."

Ruth Pemberton made no reply: her fascinated eyes saw where a trickle of blood guttered the cheek of Mr. Masterson. She thought no more on dead or living Cheyennes, but with a great sob of horror came towards him, eyeing the blood.

"Only a nick," said he. "You can't fight all day without a scratch or two."

Count Banti began to stir. He sat up in a foolish way and looked at Ruth Pemberton. She turned from him, ashamed, and let her gaze rove to where the Cheyennes, far beyond the river, were rounding the corner of a hill.

There was nothing she could say to Count Banti.

Mr. Masterson loosened and mounted Houston, which seasoned pony had comported himself throughout the melee with the steadiness which should go with his name. Presently he rode back to the buffalo wallow, and instead of four, there were eleven scalps on his bridle rein.

"A man should count his _coups_," he vouchsafed in explanation.

There was no need of defence; Ruth Pemberton, without understanding the argument which convinced her own breast, looked upon those scalps as the fitting finale of the morning's work.

Mr. Masterson caught up the buckboard horse, mate to the one upon which the Mexican had fled, and strapped a blanket on its back for the use and behoof of Count Banti-still speechless, nerves a-tangle. Then Mr.

Masterson, taking a spare cinch from his war-bags, to the disgust of Houston, proceeded with more blankets to construct a pillion upon which Ruth Pemberton might ride behind him. Houston, as he felt the cinch drawing, pointed his ears resentfully.

"Well?" threatened Mr. Masterson.

Houston relaxed the resentful ears and acquiesced with grace, fearing worse.

Mr. Masterson from the saddle held out his hand; Ruth Pemberton took it and, making a step of the stirrup which he tendered, sprang to the pillion.

"You can hold on by my belt," quoth Mr. Masterson.

And so they came back to the 'Dobe Walls; Ruth Pemberton's arms about Mr. Masterson, her cheek against his shoulder, while her soul wandered up and down in a world of strange happinesses, as one might walk among trees and flowers, with birds singing overhead.

Four days; and the buckboard bearing Ruth Pemberton, Madam Pemberton and Count Banti drew away for the North. A lieutenant with ten cavalrymen, going from Fort Elliot to Dodge, accompanied them by way of escort.

"And so you hate the East?" Ruth Pemberton had asked Mr. Masterson that morning before the start, her eyes dim, and her cheeks much too pale for so innocent a question.

"No, not hate," returned Mr. Masterson, "but my life is in the West."

As the buckboard reached the ridge from which would come the last glimpse of the Canadian, off to the south and west, outlined against the sky, stood a pony and rider. The rider waved his sombrero in farewell.

Ruth Pemberton gazed and still gazed; the hunger of the brown eyes was as though her love lay starving. The trail sloped sharply downward, and the picture of the statue horseman on the hill was s.n.a.t.c.hed away. With that-her life turned drab and desolate-Ruth Pemberton slipped to the floor of the buckboard, and buried her face in her mother's kindly lap.

CHAPTER II

THAT TRANSACTION IN PONIES

Aunt Nettie Dawson, because of her tenderness of heart and the hard acridities of her tongue, had made for herself a place in the popular esteem. The well-to-do and healthy feared her for her sarcasms, while upon the sick she descended in the guise of an unmixed blessing. Those who mourned, and by whose hearths sat trouble, found in her the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.

Cimarron Bill was the personal nephew of Aunt Nettie, the other inhabitants of Dodge being nephews and nieces by brevet, and it was to Cimarron Bill that Mr. Masterson was indebted for the advantage of Aunt Nettie's acquaintance.

"She's some frosty, Bat," explained Cimarron Bill, in apology for the frigid sort of Aunt Nettie's reception, "she's sh.o.r.e some frosty. But if you-all was ever to get shot up, now, for mebby holdin' four aces, or because you had become a drawback to a quadrille, she'd nacherally jump in an' nuss you like you was worth savin'."

Mr. Masterson and Cimarron Bill had met for the first time the Autumn before, and their friendship came about in this fashion. Sun City, a thriving metropolis, consisting of a tavern and a store, lay far to the south of Dodge and close against the Indian Territory line. Mr.

Masterson, coming north from the buffalo range, rode into Sun City late one October afternoon, and since his affairs were not urgent decided to remain till morning.

Mr. Stumps, proprietor of the Palace Hotel, being the tavern aforesaid, wore an uneasy look when Mr. Masterson avouched his intention to tarry, and submitted that his rooms were full.

"Leastwise," observed the doubtful Mr. Stumps, "all three beds is full but one; an' that is took by Cimarron Bill."

"Is this Bill person here?" queried Mr. Masterson.

"Well he ain't exactly here none just now," responded Mr. Stumps, "but he's liable to come pirootin' in. He p'inted out this mornin' for Tascosa; but he's a heap uncertain that a-way, an' it wouldn't surprise me none if he was to change his mind. All I know is he says as he rides away, 'Don't let no shorthorn have my room, Mr. Stumps, as I may need it myse'f a whole lot; an' in case I do I don't want to be obleeged to bootcher no harmless stranger for its possession.'"

"All the same," said Mr. Masterson with asperity, "I reckon I'll take that room."

"Thar'll be an uprisin' if Cimarron Bill comes back," said Mr. Stumps, as he led Mr. Masterson to the second floor.

"You won't be in it," replied Mr. Masterson confidently. "I won't ask you to help put it down."

Mr. Masterson was searching his war-bags for a clean blue shirt, meaning to do honour to Sun City at its evening meal. Suddenly a youth of his own age appeared in the door. So cat-foot had been his approach that even the trained ear of Mr. Masterson was given no creaking notice of his coming up the stair. The youthful stranger was equipped of a dancing eye and a Colt's-45, and Mr. Masterson by some mighty instinct knew him for Cimarron Bill. The question of ident.i.ty, however, was instantly made clear.

"My name's Cimarron Bill," remarked the youthful stranger, carefully covering Mr. Masterson with his weapon, "an' I'd like to ask whatever be you-all doin' in my apartments?" Then, waiving reply, he went on: "Thar, don't answer; take the short cut out of the window. I'm fretted, an' I wants to be alone."

Mr. Masterson, to facilitate those proposed improvements in his garb, had unbuckled his pistol and laid it on the bed. Cimarron Bill, with militant genius, stepped in between Mr. Masterson and his artillery.

Under these convincing circ.u.mstances the suggested window seemed the one solution, and Mr. Masterson adopted it. The twelve-foot leap to the soft prairie gra.s.s was nothing; and since Cimarron Bill, with a fine contempt for consequences in nowise calculated to prove his prudence, pitched Mr.

Masterson's belt and pistol, as well as his war-bags, after him, the latter was driven to confess that erratic personage a fair and fearless gentleman. The tacit confession, however, served as no restraint upon his movements, and seizing his weapon Mr. Masterson in his turn went cat-foot up the stair. As had Cimarron Bill before him, he towered presently in the narrow doorway, his steady muzzle to the fore.

"Jump!" quoth Mr. Masterson, and Cimarron Bill leaped from the same window which so lately had been the avenue of Mr. Masterson's departure.

Cimarron Bill did not have the luck which had attended the gymnastics of Mr. Masterson, and sprained his ankle. Whereupon, Cimarron Bill sat up and called for a gla.s.s of liquor, solacing himself the while with evil words. Following the drink, Mr. Stumps negotiated a truce between his two guests, and Mr. Masterson came down and shook Cimarron Bill by the hand. "What I like about you," said Cimarron Bill, as he met Mr.

Masterson's courtesy halfway, "is your persistency. An' as you seem sort o' took with them apartments of mine, on second thought we'll ockepy 'em in yoonison."

Mr. Masterson and Cimarron Bill became as Damon and Pythias. In the months that followed they were partners, killing buffaloes and raiding Indians for ponies, share and share alike. Mr. Masterson came finally to know Aunt Nettie. And because Cimarron Bill loved her, he also loved her, and suffered in humble silence from her caustic tongue as did his mate. For was not the fortune of one the fortune of the other? and were they not equal partners in all that came their way?

Cimarron Bill's most glaring fault was a complete inapt.i.tude for commerce. It was this defect that taught him, while at play in Mr.