Page:Clarence Mulford - Man from Bar-20.djvu/238



T WAS late in the afternoon when he awakened from a sleep which had been sound despite the stings. Removing the plasters he made a tour of the plateau, satisfying himself that there was really only one way up and that the rustlers were not trying to get to him. Returning to the camp, he filled a hollow in the rock floor with water, bathed, put on his other change of clothes, and then made a supper of cold beans and bacon. Filling another hollow, he pushed his soiled clothes in it to soak over night.

When he passed a break in the rampart-like wall near the top of the trail, which at that point shot up several feet above the top of the butte, a bullet screamed past his head, so close that he felt the wind of it. Peering cautiously across the canyon he saw a thin cloud of smoke lazily rising over the top of a huge, black lava bowlder on the crest of the other butte. A head was just disappearing and he jerked his rifle to his shoulder and fired.

"Five hundred an' a little more," he muttered. "I got it now, you wall-eyed thief!"

Another puff of smoke burst out from the lower edge 226