Annear sprang backward and to one side, drawing a six-shooter in the movement, while June was equally active.  Like a flash, two shots rang out.  Following the reports, Henry turned halfway round, while Deweese staggered a step backward.  Taking advantage of the instant, Uncle Lance sprang like a panther on to June and bore him to the ground, while the visitors fell on Annear and disarmed him in a flash.  They were dragged struggling farther apart, and after some semblance of sanity had returned, we stripped our foreman and found an ugly flesh wound crossing his side under the armpit, the bullet having been deflected by a rib.  Annear had fared worse, and was spitting blood freely, and the marks of exit and entrance of the bullet indicated that the point of one lung had been slightly chipped.

“I suppose this outcome is what you might call the amende honorable” smilingly said George Nathan, one of the visitors, later to Uncle Lance.  “I always knew there was a little bad blood existing between the boys, but I had no idea that it would flash in the pan so suddenly or I’d have stayed at home.  Shooting always lets me out.  But the question now is, How are we going to get our man home?”

Uncle Lance at once offered them horses and a wagon, in case Annear would not go into Las Palomas.  This he objected to, so a wagon was fitted up, and, promising to return it the next day, our visitors departed with the best of feelings, save between the two belligerents.  We sent June into the ranch and a man to Oakville after a surgeon, and resumed our work in the hide yard as if nothing had happened.  Somewhere I have seen the statement that the climate of California was especially conducive to the healing of gunshot wounds.  The same claim might be made in behalf of the Nueces valley, for within a month both the combatants were again in their saddles.

Within a week after this incident, we concluded our work and the hides were ready for the freighters.  We had spent over a month and had taken fully seven hundred hides, many of which, when dry, would weigh one hundred pounds, the total having a value of between five and six thousand dollars.  Like their predecessors the buffalo, the remains of the ladinos were left to enrich the soil; but there was no danger of the extinction of the species, for at Las Palomas it was the custom to allow every tenth male calf to grow up a bull.

CHAPTER XIV

A TWO YEARS’ DROUTH

The spring of ’78 was an early one, but the drouth continued, and after the hide hunting was over we rode our range almost night and day.  Thousands of cattle had drifted down from the Frio River country, which section was suffering from drouth as badly as the Nueces.  The new wells were furnishing a limited supply of water, but we rigged pulleys on the best of them, and when the wind failed we had recourse to buckets and a rope worked from the pommel of a saddle.