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52 The Hunting of Bud HowlandWanted you to read it out loud, didn'the, because the rest of us hadn't muchschooling ? Well, I guess! And thatpaper—I could see the heading all thetime—told about how Twisty Simmonswas killed and they was "looking allthrough the desert for Bud Howland—•everything. Belden was aiming to watchour faces while you was reading. Butyou missed fire on him, darned if youdidn't! Read most everything else in thepaper, but not that piece. You ought tohave seen him look you over later along !"I hadn't noticed it."He wasn't loving you much," Hankmurmured with enjoyment. "He wasn'tquite clear why you done it, either. Andsay, far as that goes, you had me guessingtoo. I was wondering—" He checkedhimself, glancing sideways at me. "Anyhow,a little after that, you notice, I opensup the paper and reads the little piecemyself—out good and loud, so's to givehim his fair chance. That took his mindoff me to some extent, though he wasn'tfull satisfied yet, of course."Well, says you, what other cards didthis 'ere coyote have? Why, that littletrick about the shooting-match. Howland,he can shoot some; maybe you'veheard that." I nodded. "So Beldenstarts for to brag. Claims he can outshootany man west of the Missoury witha rifle; and when it comes to a little gun—oh, my! He reckoned that Bud Howland,whichever one of us was him, couldn'tstand for that line of talk. He'd haveto set in to the game. It wasn't no use,though; nobody chipped in, not at first.But that fellow as called himself BobThrall, he got stirred up after a while,and they drew us all into the muss beforeit was over. You remember?""What a jackass I was," I burst out,"not to have seen through it!""You was thinking about your rocks,I guess," Hank rejoined tolerantly, gettingout his pipe."Go on!" I urged, forgetting to keepmy voice down."No call to yell," he cautioned. "Weain't so far apart." He surveyed thechaparral and the dimpled hillsides withsome thoroughness, then took up thereins and went on with the tale."So we put out some deer-meat andwaited for the coyotes. And next morningwe tried it out: one hundred yards,standing shot at the heart, and the coyotesrunning. We picked out our animiles,you give the yell, and when theywas fair travelling we all fired to onct.Mine was the middle one: I lamed it.Belden got his in the back-bone. Andthat Thrall man, he missed.""That didn't help much, did it?" Iobserved."Belden thought it did," said Hank,with a wider smile than usual. "Theway he figgered, Howland—if he wasthere—would either make a centre shotor a clean miss, according to whether he'dtumbled to what was going on or not.Now, I was out of it: just a fair hit, not goodor bad. That put it up to Thrall. See?"I nodded. That was plain enough."But Belden wasn't quite satisfied,though he stuck to Thrall from then onlike mountain-fever. So he got up thattrick about the canteen." Hank smotethe saddle-horn. "Darned if it wasn'tcute, that little scheme. I almost likedhim for it! Come down the cliff leavinghis canteen hung on a pinon-tree 'way upto the top. Just breaking camp, we was;no time to go round, and too steep toclimb straight up. Got to shoot herdown, says Belden; got to cut that therelimb, he says. But he dassent try it himself,not hardly—not if there's any one canshoot better'n he can. Might plug thecanteen instead of the limb, and thenwhere'd he be for water the rest of thetrip? Darned fancy scheme, when youget down to it!"Hank turned about, an impressive forefingerin the air."And wasn't it pretty ? Thrall up andshoots off the limb comfortable as youplease ! Belden gives a kind of sigh, mopshis face—and that's all there was to that!""But he didn't—" I could hardly sitmy horse for amazement. "But whydidn't Belden do anything, then; arrestthe man?""Wrong side of the State line," he explainedpatiently. "Had to get his manup beyond Seven Palms. And, besides,he knew by the way Thrall shot that hewasn't suspecting anything; and it was agood sight easier to travel back with himfree like that than to lug him throughforty miles of chaparral, with a lot ofstrangers to interfere."