Page:Life Amongst the Modocs.djvu/329



CHAPTER XXVIII.

BATTLES ON THE BORDER.

NTIRELY with my left hand had I made the fight, for my right one was still stiff and useless from the shot of the would-be assassin of the Pit River expedition. My friends and others were now running up the hill to the fallen officer, and Hirst was only now and then sending up in my direction a random shot as I turned my back on the scene, and pushed up the mountain into the forest. My Panama hat flapped and fluttered down on one side of my face like the wing of a wounded bird. A pistol ball had torn it to ribbons.

A bullet makes only a small hole in cloth, in buck skin a still smaller one ; but it tears linen savagely, as well as straw. The hard, tough fibre of which Panama hats are made, particularly when rendered hard and brittle in a California sun, flies into shreds before it.

Most people imagine you can hear any bullet whistle that passes you. This is a mistake; you