he bushes. And that was how
the boy got shot in the leg. It seemed a pity to do it, still a person
couldn't surely be expected to tie outlaws and hold a gun and hold Jake
and everything, and not mess them up any. He seemed a kind of nice boy,
and his tricky ways were no doubt because he had not been raised
properly.

So she made him get on his horse, which was difficult on account of being
shot in the leg, and then it seemed cruel and unnecessary to tie him,
because they had both been sufficiently shot by her to know what they
might expect if they did it again. And that was how it happened that she
drove them both ahead of her without being tied or anything, as a person
would naturally expect outlaws and horse thieves and kidnapers would be.
But Mary V would like to know how, for gracious sake, a person could do
_everything_ right, with a horse to manage and a gun to hold, and only
two hands to their name?

What Bill had said was that he had kept an eye on Tex, because it looked
to him like Tex was at the bottom of the whole business. He had seen Tex
working away from the others, innocent as a hen turkey with a nest hid
out in the weeds. Bill had done some innocent kinda sidlin' off himself,
and he had seen Tex suddenly duck into a narrow wash and disappear.

Wherefore, knowing the country even better than did Tex, Bill had ducked
into another draw that would intercept Tex, if Tex was going where Bill
guessed he was aiming to go. Tex must have aimed that way, because Bill
got him and brought him back with his hands tied behind him and his gun
riding in Bill's holster, and with no bullet holes in his person such as
Mary V's captives carried.

Johnny did not know that the other boys had been signaled back with
shots, and that the prisoners had been turned over to them while Bill,
Bland, and Mary V stayed with Johnny and waited for Sudden to negotiate
that rough stretch of country with the Ford. That was what Mary V's voice
referred to when she couldn't see why he didn't hurry.

Between times, Bland told their side of the adventure, as far as Bland
understood it. He told of the horses they had scared back, and of the
horse thieves left afoot several miles across the line. He did not know
just where, however. He told of the rancho they had flown to that
morning, the rancho Johnny had discovered a short mile from where he
had got the plane in the first place.

The horses which they had turned loose from the field would