Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/261

 I think it was Parley's sheer nerve that kept the half-breed from drawing and shooting the conductor when his back was turned. I don't know—brute beast cowed by the human mind, perhaps. No one ever knew Breed Clancy. He had his yellow streak at times, and then again the blood that was in him made him worse than a frenzied madman. Yes, I guess it was a case of "brute" all right, for there was no cowing him when the frenzy was on him.

Perley wasn't laughing, either. He was opening and shutting his watch impatiently. "Come on! Come on!" he cried at Lee. "Get those barrels out. We've got to cross Number Two at the Creek. It'll be the carpet for ours if we hold her up."

Lee grabbed the broached cask and edged it toward the doorway. The contents slopped and sloshed inside as he moved it, and occasionally a little of the stuff would spill out through the bunghole. Then, somehow, just as he got it to the door, his hold slipped, out it went, bounded on the edge of the ties, and then went down the embankment right into the hands of those squatting "blankets." They didn't squat long; I don't need to tell you that. They were on it in a mob, and they got the taste—they'd had the smell—and the fill was to come presently.

Clancy was cursing in streams; and no fouler-mouthed man than Clancy ever lived. He tried once to get the Indians off the barrel, and the stragglers backed him up half-heartedly. You might as well have tried to move that mogul on the pit there behind you. He didn't try but once, then he fell back on