第59章 MISS PEGGY'S PROTEGES(5)

She never knew that in that brief interval the wounded man, after a supreme effort, had possessed himself of his weapon, and for a moment had covered HER with its deadly muzzle. She ran on fearlessly until she saw that she had attracted the attention of the leader, when she stopped and began to wave the white-ash wand before her. The leader halted, conferred with some one behind him, who proved to be the deputy sheriff. Stepping out he advanced towards Peggy, and called sharply, "I told you to get out of this! Come, be quick!"

"You'd better get out yourself," said Peggy, waving her ash spray, "and quicker, too."

The deputy stopped, staring at the spray. "Wot's up?"

"Rattlers."

"Where?"

"Everywhere round ye--a reg'lar nest of 'em! That's your way round!" She pointed to the right, and again began beating the underbrush with her wand. The men had, meantime, huddled together in consultation. It was evident that the story of Peggy and her influence on rattlesnakes was well known, and, in all probability, exaggerated. After a pause, the whole party filed off to the right, making a long circuit of the unseen stockade, and were presently lost in the distance. Peggy ran back to the fugitive.

The fire of savagery and desperation in his eyes had gone out, but had been succeeded by a glazing film of faintness.

"Can you--get me--some water?" he whispered.

The stockade was near a spring,--a necessity for the menagerie.

Peggy brought him water in a dipper. She sighed a little; her "butcher bird"--now lost forever--had been the last to drink from it!

The water seemed to revive him. "The rattlesnakes scared the cowards," he said, with an attempt to smile. "Were there many rattlers?"

"There wasn't ANY," said Peggy, a little spitefully, "'cept YOU--a two-legged rattler!"

The rascal grinned at the compliment.

"ONE-legged, you mean," he said, indicating his helpless limb.

Peggy's heart relented slightly. "Wot you goin' to do now?" she said. "You can't stay on THERE, you know. It b'longs to ME!" She was generous, but practical.

"Were those things I fired out yours?"

"Yes."

"Mighty rough of me."

Peggy was slightly softened. "Kin you walk?"

"No."

"Kin you crawl?"

"Not as far as a rattler."

"Ez far ez that clearin'?"

"Yes."

"There's a hoss tethered out in that clearin'. I kin shift him to this end."

"You're white all through," said the man gravely.

Peggy ran off to the clearing. The horse belonged to Sam Bedell, but he had given Peggy permission to ride it whenever she wished.

This was equivalent, in Peggy's mind, to a permission to PLACE him where she wished. She consequently led him to a point nearest the stockade, and, thoughtfully, close beside a stump. But this took some time, and when she arrived she found the fugitive already there, very thin and weak, but still smiling.

"Ye kin turn him loose when you get through with him; he'll find his way back," said Peggy. "Now I must go."

Without again looking at the man, she ran back to the stockade.

Then she paused until she heard the sound of hoofs crossing the highway in the opposite direction from which the pursuers had crossed, and knew that the fugitive had got away. Then she took the astonished and still motionless lizard from her pocket, and proceeded to restore the broken coops and cages to the empty stockade.

But she never reconstructed her menagerie nor renewed her collection. People said she had tired of her whim, and that really she was getting too old for such things. Perhaps she was. But she never got old enough to reveal her story of the last wild animal she had tamed by kindness. Nor was she quite sure of it herself, until a few years afterwards on Commencement Day at a boarding-school at San Jose, when they pointed out to her one of the most respectable trustees. But they said he was once a gambler, who had shot a man with whom he had quarreled, and was nearly caught and lynched by a Vigilance Committee.