He gave me another stare.  “Why, pardner, you must think I have got a light and frivolous disposition,” says he, and with that he heaves up the great-grand-uncle of all the six-shooters I ever did see.  It made my forty-five-long look like something for a kid to cut its teeth on.  “That’s the best gun in this country,” he went on.

“Looks as if it might be,” says I.  “Has the foundry that cast it gone out of business?  I’d like to have one like it, if it’s as dangerous as it looks.”

“When I have any trouble with a man,” says he, “I don’t want to go pecking at him with a putty-blower, just irritating him, and giving him a little skin complaint here and there; I want something that’ll touch his conscience.”

He had it, for a broadside from that battery would scatter an elephant over a township.

We loped along quiet and easy until sun-up.  The Grindstone Buttes lay about a mile ahead of us.  Looking back, we saw the Injuns coming over a rise of ground ’way in the distance.

“Now,” says my friend, “I know a short cut through those hills that’ll bring us out at Johnson’s.  They’ve got enough punchers there to do the United States army up—­starched and blued.  Shall we take it?”

“Sure!” says I.  “I’m only wandering around this part of the country because this part of the country is here—­if it was anywheres else I’d be just as glad.”

So in we went.  It was the steepest and narrowest kind of a canon, looking as if it had been cut out of the rock with one crack of the axe.  I was just thinking:  “Gee whiz! but this would be a poor place to get snagged in,” when bang! says a rifle right in front of us, and m-e-arr! goes the bullet over our heads.

We were off them horses and behind a, couple of chunks of rock sooner than we hoped for, and that’s saying a good deal.

“Cussed poor shot, whoever he is,” says my friend.  “Some Injun holding us here till the rest come up, I presume.”

“That’s about the size of it—­and I’d like to make you a bet that he does it, too, if I thought I’d have a chance to collect.”

“Oh, you can’t always tell—­you might lose your money,” says he, kind of thoughtful.

“I wouldn’t mind that half as much as winning,” says I.  “But on the square, do you think we can get out?  I’ll jump him with you if you say so, although I ain’t got what you might call a passion for suicide.”

“Now you hold on a bit,” says he.  “I don’t know but what we’d have done better to stick to the horses, and run for it, but it’s too late to think of that.  Jumping him is all foolishness; he’d sit behind his little rock and pump lead into us till we wouldn’t float in brine—­and we can’t back out now.”

He talked so calm it made me kind of mad.  “Well,” says I, “in that case, let’s play ‘Simon says thumbs up’ till the rest of the crowd comes.”

“There you go!” says he.  “Just like all young fellers—­gettin’ hosstyle right away if you don’t fall in with their plans.  Now, Sonny, you keep your temper, and watch me play cushion carroms with our friend there.”