Page:Patches (1928).pdf/38

 madly towards the creek leaving Hank alone in the draw.

"Well, I guess the devil is somewhere near," thought Hank. "Baldy wouldn't have bolted like that unless the old Satan was snooking about. I guess I am in for it now."

Baldy's hoof beats had barely died away when other hoofs were heard and the killer trotted out of the draw from a clump of cedars where he had been hiding all the time.

Hank's first impulse was to run for a small tree nearby or to climb to the top of a pile of boulders fifty feet away, but he had hardly time for either maneuver for the fury charged upon him like a cyclone, snapping his teeth and raging like a veritable demon.

Then the words of Colonel Roosevelt came to Hank and they helped to steady his hand and steel his heart. "If any wild animal ever charges you, do not run away, but stand perfectly still and keep shooting. There is not an animal living that can kill a man if he keeps his nerve."

Well, Hank would do just that. There was no other alternative. When the fury was sixty feet away the six shooter cracked for the first shot and a wisp of the black horse's mane dropped to the ground. The wound was a bad one in the neck, but not fatal and the killer went mad at the pain. After that he did not