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Page 96
Now Galloway had seen him, had recognized him, perhaps, the thought
coming naturally to him that it would be Roderick Norton who rode to
cut him off. He shifted his rifle so that his right hand was on the
grip, the barrel caught in his left; he had dropped his horse's reins.
Norton was slipping a fresh clip into his gun, his own reins now upon
his horse's neck. And now both men knew that unless a bullet stopped
him Norton would cut across Galloway's path before he could come to his
men.
"At him, Roddy, old boy! We're coming!"
Norton glanced over his shoulder and pressed on. Brocky had missed
him, had seen, had called back a half dozen of his men and was
following. Well, if he dropped, maybe Brocky and the others could get
Jim Galloway. It really began to look as though Galloway had played
out his string.
They were firing from the mountainside now, the bullets thus far flying
wild of their rushing target. Norton shook his head and urged his
horse to fresh endeavor. In a moment he would be fairly between
Galloway and Galloway's last chance. His eye picked out the spot where
he would dismount at that moment, a tumble of big boulders. He would
swing down so that they would be between him and the mountain, so that
nothing but moonlit open space lay between him and Jim Galloway.
While rifles cracked and spat fire and sprayed lead over him and about
him he rode the last fifty yards. He reached the boulders, set his
horse up, threw himself from the saddle, and with his back to the rock,
his face toward Galloway, he lifted his rifle. Galloway, almost at the
same instant, jerked in his own horse. He was so close that Norton
caught his cry of rage.
"Hands up, Galloway!" cried the sheriff. "Hands up or I'll drop you."
But at last Galloway had come out into the open; at last there was no
subterfuge to stand forth at his need; at last, gambler that he was, he
accepted the even break of man to man. As Norton's voice rang out
Galloway fired.
He shot twice before Norton pulled the trigger. Norton shot but the
once. Galloway dropped his rifle, sat rigid a moment, toppled from the
saddle. And his men, seeing him go down, cried out to one another and
drew back into the mountain ca�ons.
"Funny thing," said Brocky Lane afterward. "Had the picture of a kid
of a girl in his pocket! Must have carted it around for a year. Old
Roddy's bullet tore right square through it."
It was a picture of Florrie Engle, taken years before. As Brocky said:
"Just a kid of a girl." Where he got it nobody knew. But then there
were other things about Jim Galloway which no one knew. Perhaps . . .
Quien sabe!
During the late hours of the night and the following forenoon the thing
was ended. Sheriff Roberts's deputies with a posse in automobiles had
raced southward, intercepting those other cars despatched toward the
border by the Kid and del Rio. Brocky Lane with a score of men had
swept down upon the stolen herds, scattered them, fired fifty shots,
emptied some three or four saddles, and sent the escaping rustlers
flying toward the Mexican line. Singly and in small groups other men,
farmers, cowboys, miners, and the dwellers of small settlements, joined
with Norton's men, giving battle to those of Galloway's crowd who had
drawn back into the fastnesses of Mt. Temple. In the afternoon Norton,
with the aid of a handful of cowboys from Brocky's outfit and from Las
Flores, escorted fifteen anxious-faced prisoners to the county-seat,
where jail capacity was to be taxed. And night had come again, serene
and peaceful with the glory of the moon and stars, when he rode once
more into San Juan, sore and saddle-weary.
At the hotel he learned that Virginia had gone to the Engles. He left
his jaded horse with Ignacio and walked down the street. In front of
the Casa Blanca he stopped a moment, staring musingly at the solid
adobe walls gleaming white in the moonlight. The place was quiet,
deserted. No single light winked at him through door or window. It
seemed to him to be brooding over the passing of Jim Galloway.
He found Florrie and Elmer strolling under the cottonwoods. They had
scant interest in him, little time to bestow upon a mere mortal.
Florrie could only cry ecstatically that Black Bill was a hero! He,
all alone, had terrorized the Mexican woman guarding her, had saved
her, had brought her back. And Elmer could only look pleased and
stammer and whisper to Fluff to be still.
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