“Two hundred pounds lighter, my long-eared pards!” ejaculated Timon, over whose florid face the evidence of his exertion was pouring. “Now a last pull at my straw-coloured bird, an' then I'll say ho! for the sun-dance, or ho! for Deadwood. I can't make up my mind.”
Old Tanglefoot's hands flew eagerly to the demijohn encased in a network of split willows, and he was in the act of lifting the often-touched nozzle to his lips, when a human voice made him start.
“I say, stranger, ain't ye losin' a right smart bit o' yer cargo?”
The demijohn almost dropped from Tanglefoot's hands, and he retreated from the boyish countenance which, full of health and good-humour, appeared at the rear end of the wagon.
The next moment, with his hand on the butt of his “navy,” Timon Moss glided across the kegs toward the boy.
“Say, what's yer name?” he asked gruffly.
“I guess it's Gopher Gad, an' I'm not afraid of anybody in the Cheyenne country.”
“Ain't, eh?” hissed Timon, “Wal, the reason is because you've never met old Tanglefoot before. Do ye ever go to Deadwood?”
“Been there once,” answered the boy, who showed signs of retreating from the basilisk-eyes of the whisky-smuggler.
“Then, by the spirit of Bacchus, ye'll never go thar ag'in!”
The revolver full cocked, and tightly griped by hands that had wielded it before, shot from its sheath, and the boy with a cry of fright disappeared in an instant.
“Can't git away that easy,” grated Timon. “Blast my cargo! if you shall go to Deadwood an' spile the Midnight Jack story.”
The whisky-smuggler leaped from the wagon as the last sentence fell from his lips.
His murderous eyes instantly caught sight of his intended prey, and, with a roar not unlike that of a jungle tiger, he darted forward.
But the next moment the western villain executed a sudden halt, for a loud cry came down from the shadows above.
“Cl'ar the track! I'm the Thunderbolt of the Dark-edged Cloud! a reg'lar sky-scraper!”
Such were the words that halted old Tanglefoot, and, revolver in hand, he looked up, as if he expected to see the speaker leap upon him from the hills overhead.
Tall and handsome, affecting the dress of the Sicilian brigands, with a mass of dark hair falling to his shapely shoulders, this pest of the road was the most frequently-mentioned man in Dakota. He was still young, and the plundered agents whose lives he had spared said that he was nothing more than a mere boy. Though never seen in Deadwood in brigand costume, his personal appearance was well known to every one. They knew that there was a grease spot on the left side of his sombrero-like hat—that he wore a cavalry-button on his right shoulder, and that a few links of a gold watch-chain hung from his black courser's bit.