Page:Clarence Mulford - Man from Bar-20.djvu/269

 An Unwelcome Visitor bunch of sap-headed jackasses, with no more sense than a sheep-herder. I'm 'most ashamed to get you; but I'm stranglin' my shame. You pore mutton-heads!"

Quigley's language almost seared the vegetation and he was threatened with spontaneous combustion. When he paused for breath he swung his rifle up and pulled the trigger, almost blind with rage. Johnny's answering shot ripped through his forearm and he felt the awful sickness which comes when a bone is scraped. Half fainting, Quigley dropped his rifle and leaned back against a rock, regarding the numbed and bleeding arm with eyes which saw the landscape turning over and over. Gathering his senses by a great effort of will, he steadied himself and managed to make and apply a rough bandage with the clumsy aid of one hand and his teeth. "I'll give you till tomorrow mornin' to make me an offer," shouted Johnny; "but don't get reckless before then, because th' temptation shore will be more than I can stand. Think it over."

"D—n his measly hide!" moaned Quigley, his anger welling up anew. "Give him our ranch, an' cows, an' pay him to let us leave th' country! Six of us! Six gun-fightin', law-breakin', cattle-liftin' cow-punchers; sane, healthy, an' as tough as rawhide rope, payin' him, a lone man up a tree, to let us leave th' country! All 257