It seemed a pity to do it, still a person couldn't surely be expected to tie outlaws and hold a gun and hold Jake and everything, and not mess them up any.

He seemed a kind of nice boy, and his tricky ways were no doubt because he had not been raised properly.
So she made him get on his horse, which was difficult on account of being shot in the leg, and then it seemed cruel and unnecessary to tie him, because they had both been sufficiently shot by her to know what they might expect if they did it again.

And that was how it happened that she drove them both ahead of her without being tied or anything, as a person would naturally expect outlaws and horse thieves and kidnapers would be.
But Mary V would like to know how, for gracious sake, a person could do _everything_ right, with a horse to manage and a gun to hold, and only two hands to their name?
What Bill had said was that he had kept an eye on Tex, because it looked to him like Tex was at the bottom of the whole business.

He had seen Tex working away from the others, innocent as a hen turkey with a nest hid out in the weeds.

Bill had done some innocent kinda sidlin' off himself, and he had seen Tex suddenly duck into a narrow wash and disappear.
Wherefore, knowing the country even better than did Tex, Bill had ducked into another draw that would intercept Tex, if Tex was going where Bill guessed he was aiming to go.