Morris had not to wait more than fifteen minutes after Len’s departure before he found his work at hand. The snow so softened the trail that the sound of the horse’s hoofs were not heard until they had approached within a few feet of the ambush, and amid the blinding flakes, it was impossible to recognize the face of the well-muffled rider.

It was certainly Old Bob, however, who had been seen saddling the horse, and Morris concluded that the man before him was he. Had it been Scotty, he might have hardened his heart to almost any degree of severity, but heretofore he had had no quarrel with Bob, for whom he felt contempt chiefly, and he intended to let him off as easily as it would be safe to do.{170}

Rousing himself at the sound of the stumbling nag, Morris had but half a minute to pause, before suddenly springing in front of the horse, with a blow at the animal’s head and a yell like a wild Shoshone.

The startled and punished animal reared, spun round in the narrow trail as nimbly as a deer could have done, slipped on the wet stones, and fell headlong over the low bank at the edge of the trail, flinging his astounded rider over his head into the creek.

Morris, delighted at the effect of his first charge, followed it up with a second whoop, hearing which the horse picked himself up and rushed up the trail at break-neck speed, frightened out of its senses.

Old Bob, panic-stricken, dumb-founded, and shocked by his fall, was just rising from the shallow water, when Morris got down the bank. Leaping upon him, he seized the wretched victim by collar, and shook him by both hands as a terrier does a rat. Then snatching up his stick he began to lay it vigor{171}ously over Bob’s shoulders, keeping at it until the old fellow could find enough of his scattered wits and tangled legs to enable him to run away.

“Get back in your hole, you old sarpint!” Morris yelled, as he flung his cudgel after the retreating enemy. “Next time you thieves want to sneak off to town, mind you get permission of your betters!”

To this Bob replied, as was expected, by a couple of shots from his revolver, which, up to this time, he had fairly forgotten in the surprise of the unexpected attack, but Morris dodged behind a rock at the first flash, and no harm was done.

He did not return this random fire, but kept wide-awake for a few minutes, thinking Bob might come back with his companions. This, however, he did not do, and Morris lost no further time in starting home.

Bob admitted afterward, that he thought that at least two men had attacked him, which spoke well for Morris’s activity, and that it{172} was Max who was giving him the shaking. Wet, sore, chilled and altogether dazed, he was in no condition to lead an attack against an ambushed enemy in the middle of a snowy night, nor were his accomplices eager to go and avenge his wrongs, preferring, so long as their own precious skins remained whole, to stay where they were and scold at him for his failure.
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