“Then I’ll tie you there. You’re going with me to Bonita.”
“There’s more Apaches. We’ll hear from ’em.”
“All right; if that’s how it pans out, they’d hear from me, too.”
Dell was strong, in spite of her slender build. Patterson could help himself but very little, but the girl pulled him upright, got one of his feet into the stirrup, and then heaved him onto the horse’s back.
There the sergeant drooped limply, hanging with both hands to the saddle-horn.
Hastily unshipping her picket-rope, Dell bound the wounded trooper to his mount, her deft fingers flying like lightning.
Then, with Patterson’s carbine in her hands, she leaped swiftly to the back of Silver Heels, caught the end of the picket-rope, which she had passed through the bit-rings of the army horse, and started on.
The Apache’s rifle spoke again, the bullet whistling sibilantly through the air.
Dell felt a twitching of her buckskin blouse on the left side. She had not been hit by the flying slug, but she had had a close call.
As she turned in the saddle, carbine in her hands and eyes on the alert for red foes, an arrow sailed toward her, and cut through the brim of her brown sombrero.
“Better let me go, girl,” groaned Patterson. “With me out o’ the way ye can show ’em a clean pair o’ heels.”
“We’ll pull through together,” returned the girl resolutely, “or go down together. That’s flat.”
The next moment she saw three Apaches racing along the top of the hogback.
Without taking the trouble to raise the carbine to her shoulder, she fired from the hip. Her aim was unerring, and the foremost of the savages careened sideways.
Another bullet came at her. She heard a ring of lead upon steel, felt the carbine shiver in her hands, and a shock like that from an electric battery raced through her arms.
Again she essayed to pull the trigger of the carbine. The attempt brought a revelation. The bullet that had struck the carbine had shattered its mechanism and rendered it useless.
Again and again she essayed to shoot, but each time she failed. The two remaining Apaches were leaping toward her, coming up under cover of the wounded sergeant.
Flinging aside the carbine, Dell once more fell back on her revolvers. But to use these smaller arms without hurt to Patterson was well-nigh impossible.