Page:B M Bower - Heritage of the Sioux.djvu/271

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THE STUFF HE IS MADE OF

they's another one Johnny 'n' me kin make it, mebby."

"Well, I was brought up in a barbed wire country," Pink exploded, "but I'll be darned if I ever saw a stunt like that pulled off before!"

"We-ell, I hed a bronk go hog-wild 'n' pop three wires on a fence one time," Applehead explained modestly, "'n' he didn't cut hisself a-tall, skurcely. It's all accordin' t' how yuh hit it, I reckon. Anyway, I calc'lated it was wuth tryin', 'cause we shore woulda had our hands full if we'd a stopped at that fence, now I'm tellin' yuh! 'N' another thing," he added bodefully, "I figgured we'd better be gittin' to Luck 'n' his bunch, I calc'late they need us, mebby."

No one made any reply to that statement, but even Lite, who never had been inclined to laugh at him, looked at Applehead with a new respect. The Indians, having scurried back out of range of Lite's uncomfortably close shooting, yelled a bedlam of yips and howls and came on again in a closer group than before, shooting as they rode—at the four men first, and then at the hindmost pack-horse that gave a hop over the wire left across

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