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 strands as they broke.
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