ily at the others to see if they had observed where his
second bullet hit. But the others were eyeing Applehead uneasily and
paid no attention to Pink or his attempts to hit an Indian on the run.
And presently Pink forgot it also while he watched Applehead, who was
apparently determined to commit suicide in a violently original form.

"You fellers keep behind, now---and hold the Injuns back fer a minute
er two," Applehead yelled while he set himself squarely in the saddle,
gathered up his reins as though he were about to "top a bronk" and
jabbed the spurs with a sudden savageness into Johnny's flanks.

"GIT outa here!" he yelled, and Johnny with an astonished lunge, "got."

Straight toward the fence they raced, Johnny with his ears laid back
tight against his skull and his nose pointed straight out before him,
with old Applehead leaning forward and yelling to Johnny with a cracked
hoarseness that alone betrayed how far youth was behind him.

They thought at first that he meant to jump the fence, and they knew he
could not make it. When they saw that he meant to ride through it, Weary
and Pink groaned involuntarily at the certainty of a fall and sickening
entanglement in the wires. Only Lite, cool as though he were rounding up
milch cows, rode half-turned in the saddle and sent shot after shot
back at the line of Navajos, with such swift precision that the Indians
swerved and fell back a little, leaving another pony wallowing in the
sand and taking with them one fellow who limped until he had climbed up
behind one who waited for him.

"Go it, Johnny--dang yore measly hide, go to it! We'll show 'm we ain't
so old 'n' tender we cain't turn a trick t'bug their dang eyes out?
Bust into it! WE'LL show 'em!--" And Applehead shrilled a raucous range
"HOO-EEE-EE!" as Johnny lunged against the taut wires.

It was a long chance he took--a "dang long chance" as Applehead admitted
afterward. But, as he had hoped, it happened that Johnny's stride
brought him with a forward leap against the wires, so that the full
impact of his eleven-hundred pounds plus the momentum of his speed, plus
the weight of Applehead and the saddle, hit the wires fair and full.
They popped like cut wires on a bale of hay--and it was lucky that they
were tight strung so that there was no slack to take some of the force
away. It was not luck, but plain shrewdness on Applehead's part, that
Johnny came straight on, so that there was no tearing see-saw of the