THE BATTLE WITH THE BANDITS
THE highwayman uttered a yell, and leaped clear of the ground, dropping his rifle, which clattered to the trail within easy reach of the Overton girl’s hand.
Bang! Bang!
Two rifle bullets ripped through the roof of the old stagecoach.
“The cowards!” fumed Grace under her breath.
Snatching up the rifle that the highwayman had dropped, she crawled out from under the coach, and ran around behind it just as two more bandit shots rang out.
Grace threw the rifle to her shoulder and fired at a shadowy figure that she could barely see, and, in the next second, Lieutenant Wingate’s heavy army revolver cracked spitefully from the front seat of the coach. With Grace Harlowe’s first shot Hippy had unlimbered, and his revolver was now banging away to good purpose, as Grace realized when she heard another yell of pain.
“Look out, Grace, I’m coming!” warned Hippy as he leaped from the top of the coach to the trail.
“Disarm this fellow, please! He is wounded only in the leg, and he’s dangerous. I will take care of the others while you are doing that,” said Grace, starting to creep forward with rifle ready to fire.
Bang!
A revolver flashed from behind a jutting shelf of rock.
Bang!
The rifle in Grace Harlowe’s hands answered the revolver shot. She heard her bullet smack against the shale rock and pieces of stone patter on the trail.
“Ouch!” grunted the bandit who had fired at her.
Grace was certain that she had not hit the man, but she believed that a splinter of rock had accomplished what her bullet had missed doing.
While all of this was going on, Hippy was removing the weapons from the bandit through whose leg Grace had fired a bullet from her automatic revolver.
The Overton girl was still cautiously creeping forward.
“If any of you highwaymen fires another shot it will be your last,” she warned.
“Look out, Mrs. Gray! I reckon there’s another of them critters behind thet pint of rock,” drawled the calm voice of Ike Fairweather, who sat holding his horses, observing the fight with fascinated eyes. Ike, eager as he was to get into the fight, dared not leave his team, knowing that, if he did so, they would promptly run away with the coach and outfit.
“I have my eye on him, Mr. Fairweather,” replied Grace in a voice that was without a trace of excitement. “You heard what I said, fellow!” she added, addressing the bandit lurking behind the rock. “Toss your weapons into the road! Toss them out!”
Bang!
Again Grace Harlowe had fired at the same rock, and again she heard a scattering rain of shale that her bullet dislodged.
The highwayman hiding there threw his rifle away. She heard it fall on the trail, but was certain that the man still possessed at least one revolver, and perhaps two.
“The rest of them! You have two more weapons. Out with them, quick!”
Two revolvers followed the rifle and fell on the trail, just as she was about to emphasize her command with another shot, as a reminder that she meant what she said.
With rifle at ready, Grace now sprang boldly to the ledge of rock where she saw a man standing leaning against a tree, a hand pressed to his forehead. A few yards further on were two others, one lying beside the trail, the other sitting with his back against a rock.
“How many of you are there?” demanded Grace of the standing man.
“Three others,” weakly answered the bandit.
“Are the two here badly hurt?”
“I – I don’t know.”
“What’s the matter with you?”
“Splinter of rock hit me on the head,” groaned the fellow.
“You stand where you are if you know what is good for you,” directed Grace. “Get up!” she ordered, stepping over to the sitting bandit.
“I can’t. Got smacked in the laig an’ haid. I reckon I’ll git you yet fer this bizness.”
“Don’t threaten. Hippy!”
“Righto!”
“When you can leave your patient, please come here.”
Lieutenant Wingate approached at a brisk trot. By now the rest of the Overton girls, having found their courage, had crept from the stagecoach and were hiding behind it, peering out through troubled eyes. Elfreda finally stepped out and walked slowly toward the scene of activity, but halted a little distance from it, not wishing to detract Grace’s attention from her work.
“Please search the fellow sitting here and remove his weapons, Hippy. Also, please see if I have killed the one on the ground there. I can’t quite bring myself to touch either of them,” said Grace.
The man referred to was not dead, but he was unconscious.
“He will be out of his trance soon, I think,” announced Hippy after a brief diagnosis. “He has a dandy scalp wound. Good work, Brown Eyes. Any more of his kind looking for trouble?”
“I think not. Have you searched each one, Hippy?”
“Yes.” Lieutenant Wingate was still working over the unconscious bandit. “He is coming around now.”
“Elfreda!”
“Yes, Grace.”
“Where are the girls?”
“Hiding behind the coach until the smoke of battle has cleared.”
“Please tell them to watch the fellow that I winged first, and to shout if he tries to crawl away. You ask Mr. Fairweather if he has any rope. When we get these fellows in condition to move we shall have to tie them.”
Elfreda walked back to the coach, returning a few moments later with a coil of clothesline.
“Is there anything more that I can do to assist you, Grace?” she asked.
“Yes. Tell Mr. Fairweather to turn the coach around, for we must return to Globe as quickly as possible. The prisoners must have attention, and then – ”
“Jail,” suggested Elfreda.
Grace nodded.
“The driver says he will have to unhook the horses and turn the coach around by hand,” Miss Briggs reported.
“Tell him to do so. What will he do with the horses while turning the vehicle?”
“He says he must stake them down,” replied Elfreda, “because the team will run away the instant his back is turned.”
Grace made no reply, but stepped over to Lieutenant Wingate.
“How is your man?” she questioned.
“He will be ready for jail by the time Ike is ready to start. That’s all right, old pard,” he added, speaking to the man he was working over. “Don’t struggle, for I can’t spare the time just now to clout you over the head. You thought this wagonload of girls would be an easy mark to rob, didn’t you? I reckon you have several other guesses coming. Of course you couldn’t be expected to know that this crowd is right out of the war zone in France, every mother’s daughter of them just eager for trouble. The matter with you amateurs is that you don’t know how to start a real mix-up.”
“Please don’t nag the man, Lieutenant,” admonished Grace.
“I’m not. I’m giving him brotherly advice for the good of his physiognomy. How is the bird there by the coach?”
Grace said the girls were watching that bandit. She handed the clothesline to Hippy.
“You must tie his feet. He promises to