Dodge City (Kan.) -- Fiction; Masterson, Bat, 1853-1921 -- Fiction; Western stories
“Cheyenne,” said Mr. Wright, sinking his voice to a whisper. “Warm, too;
that moccasin was on its owner not five minutes ago!”
Higginson Peabody took the buckskin footgear in his hands, which shook a
little. The moccasin _was_ warm. It could hardly have been otherwise
since Mr. Wright had carried it in an inside pocket.
Mr. Wright glanced furtively about.
“We’d better skin out for Dodge,” said he.
Higginson Peabody wheeled, being quite in the humour for Dodge. He was
on the threshold of saying so when a medley of yelps and yells broke
forth. Higginson Peabody cast a look to the rear; a score of befeathered
and ochre-bedabbled demons were in open cry not a furlong away.
Mr. Wright had made no idle brag when he said the pony bestrode by
Higginson Peabody could outstrip an antelope. The latter gave that
animal its head and the scenery began racing rearward in a
slate-coloured blur. Mr. Wright’s pony was panting on the flank of its
flying mate.
“Ride hard!” shouted Mr. Wright. “To be captured is death by torture!”
Higginson Peabody did ride hard. There was a rattle of rifles and
six-shooters; the high lead ripped and whined and whistled—new sounds to
the shrinking ears of Higginson Peabody! Now and again a bullet
scuttered along the ground to right or left and threw up ominous pinches
of dust. Suddenly Mr. Wright reeled in the saddle.
“Save yourself!” he gasped. “Tell Masterson and the boys——”
The rest was lost to Higginson Peabody, for Mr. Wright’s pony, evidently
as badly wounded as its rider, began falling to the rear.
On tore Higginson Peabody. Dodge at last! Drawing a deep breath he swept
down the main street like a tornado.
“Indians! Indians!” yelled Higginson Peabody.
Arriving opposite its home corral the pony set four hoofs and skated;
recovering, it wheeled to the left. Higginson Peabody, by these abrupt
manoeuvres, was spilled from the saddle “like a pup from a basket,”
according to Mr. Kelly, who watched the ceremony from the Alhambra door.
Higginson Peabody reached the grass in a convenient ball. After a
prolonged roll of twenty feet he scrambled up uninjured.
“Get your guns!” he cried to Mr. Kelly, and then began to run.
It was afterward a matter of regret in Dodge that no arrangements had
been made for timing Higginson Peabody. He had only covered one hundred
yards when he ran into the arms of Mr. Masterson, but it was the
dispassionate judgment of both Mr. Kelly and Mr. Short, who, from their
respective houses of entertainment, reviewed the feat, that he did those
one hundred yards in better than ten seconds. Indeed, so much was
popular admiration excited by the winged work of Higginson Peabody that,
in commemoration thereof, Dodge renamed him the “Jackrabbit,” by which
honourable appellation he was ever afterward known to its generous
inhabitants.
“Get your guns!” shouted Higginson Peabody when stopped by the outspread
arms.
“What’s the trouble?” asked Mr. Masterson.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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