g to cross the stream, manage their frantic horses
and shoot--all at the same time--they managed to do enough of the
latter to wound several of the cowboys, one seriously, as developed
later.

And, just as Dick was reloading his gun, he gave a cry and the weapon
dropped from his hands.

"Hit?" cried Bud.

"A little," Dick answered, and he tried to smile, though it was not a
very good attempt.

"Get back under cover," advised Nort, for there was cover, of a sort,
behind where the cowboys were fighting, a range of low hills that would
effectually screen the bullets of the Greasers.

"Oh, it doesn't amount to anything," Dick insisted, holding his left
hand over his right, for it was the latter that was hit. "It's only a
scratch."

"Well, get a bandage on it and come back in the game--if you can, boy,"
advised Billee, who had ridden up on hearing Dick's cry. "We'll look
after it later--when we drive these skunks back where they belong."

This, from Billee, amounted to an order, and Dick obeyed, wheeling his
horse and taking refuge behind a hill. There, in anticipation of some
casualties, a sort of emergency dressing station had been laid out,
with water, lint and bandages. There was water not only for man but
for beast, since it was impossible to let the horses go to the creek in
the face of the fire from the sheep men. So Dick and his steed drank
thirstily and then Dick bandaged, as best he could, his wounded hand.
It was more than a scratch, being, in fact, a deep flesh wound, but the
bullet had struck a glancing blow and had gone out again, for which
Dick was thankful.

Meanwhile he could hear the shooting going on at the scene he had left.
The cowboys, riding up and down the bank of the creek on their fleet
horses, offered very poor marks for the indifferent shooting of the
Mexicans, or the casualties on the part of the Diamond X forces would
have been much heavier than it was. Even then several were hit, and
Billee's hat was carried off his head by a bullet, which, if it had
gone a few inches lower, would have ended the career of that versatile
cowboy.

But the quick and accurate firing of the cowboys was having its effect,
and it was an effect that was telling not only on the morale but on the
fighting ability of the sheep men. For several horses were killed, and
a number of men put out of the game.

For a few minutes, though, it seemed that, after all, the attackers
would make a landing. But wit