"Come to git me with that popgun, did you? Hmp! Fat chance." The bad man fired again, still approaching very carefully.
Round the corner of the house a man had come. He spoke quickly. "Turn yore gun this way, Dug."
It was Shorty. His revolver flashed at the same instant. Doble staggered, steadied himself, and fired.
The forty-fives roared. Yellow flames and smoke spurted. The bulldog barked. Dave's parlor toy had come into action.
Out of the battle Shorty and Sanders came erect and uninjured. Doble was lying on the ground, his revolver smoking a foot or two from the twitching, outstretched hand.
The outlaw was dead before Shorty turned him over. A bullet had passed through the heart. Another had struck him on the temple, a third in the chest.
"We got him good," said Shorty. "It was comin' to him. I reckon you don't know that he fired the chaparral on purpose. Wanted to wipe out the Jackpot, I s'pose. Yes, Dug sure had it comin' to him."
Dave said nothing. He looked down at the man, eyes hard as jade, jaw clamped tight. He knew that but for Shorty's arrival he would probably be lying there himself.
"I was aimin' to shoot it out with him before I heard of this last scullduggery. Soon as the kid woke me I hustled up my intentions." The bad man looked at Dave's weapon with the flicker of a smile on his face. "He called it a popgun. I took notice it was a right busy li'l' plaything. But you got yore nerve all right. I'd say you hadn't a chance in a thousand. You played yore hand fine, keelin' over so's he'd come clost enough for you to get a crack at him. At that, he'd maybe 'a' got you if I hadn't drapped in."
"Yes," said Sanders.
He walked across to the corral fence, where Joyce sat huddled against the lower bars.
She lifted her head and looked at him from wan eyes out of which the life had been stricken. They stared at him in dumb, amazed questioning.
Dave lifted her from the ground.
"I… I thought you… were dead," she whispered.
"Not even powder-burnt. His six-shooter outranged mine. I was trying to get him closer."
"Is he…?"
"Yes. He'll never trouble any of us again."
She shuddered in his arms.
Dave ached for her in every tortured nerve. He did not know, and it was not his place to ask, what price she had had to pay.
Presently she told him, not in words, without knowing what he was suffering for her. A ghost of a smile touched her eyes.
"I knew you would come. It's all right now."
His heart leaped. "Yes, it's all right, Joyce."
She recurred to her fears for him. "You're not … hiding any wounds from me? I saw you fall and lie there while he shot at you."
"He never touched me."
She disengaged herself from his arms and looked at him, wan, haggard, unshaven, eyes sunken, a tattered wretch scarred with burns.
"What have you done to yourself?" she asked, astonished at his appearance.
"Souvenirs of the fire," he told her. "They'll wash and wear off. Don't suppose I look exactly pretty."
He had never looked so handsome in her eyes.
CHAPTER XLV
JOYCE MAKES PIES
Juan Otero carried the news back to Malapi. He had been waiting on the crest of the hill to see the issue of the adventure and had come forward when Dave gave him a signal.
Shorty brought Keith in from where he had left the boy in the brush. The youngster flew into his sister's arms. They wept over each other and she petted him with caresses and little kisses.
Afterward she made some supper from the supplies Doble had laid in for his journey south. The men went down to the creek, where they bathed and washed their wounds. Darkness had not yet fallen when they went to sleep, all of them exhausted by the strain through which they had passed.
Not until the cold crystal dawn did they awaken. Joyce was the first up. She had breakfast well under way before she had Keith call the still sleeping men. With the power of quick recuperation which an outdoor life had given them, both Shorty and Dave were fit for any exertion again, though Sanders was still suffering from his burns.
After they had eaten they saddled. Shorty gave them a casual nod of farewell.
"Tell Applegate to look me up in Mexico if he wants me," he said.
Joyce would not let it go at that. She made him shake hands. He was in the saddle, and her eyes lifted to his and showered gratitude on him.
"We'll never forget you—never," she promised. "And we do so hope you'll be prosperous and happy."
He grinned down at her sheepishly. "Same to you, Miss," he said; and added, with a flash of audacity, "To you and Dave both."
He headed south, the others north.
From the hilltop Dave looked back at the squat figure steadily diminishing with distance. Shorty was moving toward Mexico, unhasting and with a certain sureness of purpose characteristic of him.
Joyce smiled. It was the first signal of unquenchable youth she had flashed since she had been trapped into this terrible adventure. "I believe you admire him, Dave," she mocked. "You're just as grateful to him as I am, but you won't admit it. He's not a bad man at all, really."
"He's a good man gone bad. But I'll say this for Shorty. He's some man.
He'll do to ride the river with."
"Yes."
"At the fire he was the best fighter in my gang—saved one of the boys at the risk of his own life. Shorty's no quitter."
She shut her teeth on a little wave of emotion. Then, "I'm awful sorry for him," she said.
He nodded appreciation of her feeling. "I know, but you don't need to worry any. He'll not worry about himself. He's sufficient, and he'll get along."
They put their horses to the trail again.
Crawford met them some miles nearer town. He had been unable to wait for their arrival. Neither he nor the children could restrain their emotion at sight of each other. Dave felt they might like to be alone and he left the party, to ride across to the tendejon with Bonita's bulldog revolver.
That young woman met him in front of the house. She was eager for news.
Sanders told her what had taken place. They spoke in her tongue.
"And Juan—is it all right about him?" she asked.
"Juan has wiped the slate clean. Mr. Crawford wants to know when Bonita is to be married. He has a wedding present for her."
She was all happy smiles when he left her.
Late that afternoon Bob Hart reached town. He and Dave were alone in the Jackpot offices when the latter forced himself to open a subject that had always been closed between them. Sanders came to it reluctantly. No man had ever found a truer friend than he in Bob Hart. The thing he was going to do seemed almost like a stab in the back.
"How about you and Joyce, Bob?" he asked abruptly.
The eyes of the two met and held. "What about us, Dave?"
"It's like this," Sanders said, flushed and embarrassed. "You were here first. You're entitled to first chance. I meant to keep out of it, but things have come up in spite of me. I want to do whatever seems right to you. My idea is to go away till—till you've settled how you stand with her. Is that fair?"
Bob smiled, ruefully. "Fair enough, old-timer. But no need of it. I never had a chance with Joyce, not a dead man's look-in. Found that out before ever you came home. The field's clear far as I'm concerned. Hop to it an' try yore luck."
Dave took his advice, within the hour. He found Joyce at home in the kitchen. She was making pies energetically. The sleeves of her dress were rolled up to the elbows and there was a dab of flour on her temple where she had brushed back a rebellious wisp of hair.
She blushed prettily at sight of her caller. "I didn't know it was you when I called to come in. Thought it was Keith playing a trick on me."
Both of them were embarrassed. She did not know what to do with him in the kitchen and he did not know what to do with himself. The girl was acutely conscious that yesterday she had flung herself into his arms withou
t shame.
"I'll go right on with my pies if you don't mind," she said. "I can talk while I work."
"Yes."
But neither of them talked. She rolled pie-crust while the silence grew significant.
"Are your burns still painful?" she asked at last, to make talk.
"Yes—no. Beg pardon, I—I was thinking of something else."
Joyce flashed one swift look at him. She knew that an emotional crisis was upon her. He was going to brush aside the barriers between them. Her pulses began to beat fast. There was the crash of music in her blood.
"I've got to tell you, Joyce," he said abruptly. "It's been a fight for me ever since I came home. I love you. I think I always have—even when I was in prison."
She waited, the eyes in her lovely, flushed face shining.
"I had no right to think of you then," he went on. "I kept away from you. I crushed down hope. I nursed my bitterness to prove to me there could never be anything between us. Then Miller confessed and—and we took our walk over the hills. After that the sun shone. I came out from the mists where I had been living."
"I'm glad," she said in a low voice. "But Miller's confession made no difference in my thought of you. I didn't need that to know you."
"But I couldn't come to you even then. I knew how Bob Hart felt, and after all he'd done for me it was fair he should have first chance."
She looked at him, smiling shyly. "You're very generous."
"No. I thought you cared for him. It seemed to me any woman must. There aren't many men like Bob."
"Not many," she agreed. "But I couldn't love Bob because"—her steadfast eyes met his bravely—"because of another man. Always have loved him, ever since that night years ago when he saved my father's life. Do you really truly love me, Dave?"
"God knows I do," he said, almost in a whisper.
"I'm glad—oh, awf'ly glad." She gave him her hands, tears in her soft brown eyes. "Because I've been waiting for you so long. I didn't know whether you ever were coming to me."
Crawford found them there ten minutes later. He was looking for Joyce to find him a collar-button that was missing.
"Dawggone my hide!" he fumed, and stopped abruptly, the collar-button forgotten.
Joyce flew out of Dave's arms into her father's.
"Oh, Daddy, Daddy, I'm so happy," she whispered from the depths of his shoulder.
The cattleman looked at Dave, and his rough face worked. "Boy, you're in luck. Be good to her, or I'll skin you alive." He added, by way of softening this useless threat, "I'd rather it was you than anybody on earth, Dave."
The young man looked at her, his Joy-in-life, the woman who had brought him back to youth and happiness, and he answered with a surge of emotion:
"I'll sure try."
THE END
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Gunsight Pass Page 25
