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"I am a ranger, Miss Longstreth." "And oh! I am a rustler's daughter," she cried. "That's so much more terrible than I'd suspected. It was tricky cattle deals I imagined he was engaged in. But only to-night I had strong suspicions aroused." "How? Tell me." "I overheard Floyd say that men were coming to-night to arrange a meeting for my father at a rendezvous near Ord. Father did not want to go.
Oroville once marked farthest north for the Peace River gold camps, but with mining long ago abandoned it now marks farthest south for a rustler's camp, being a favorite resort for the people of the Williams Cache country. Oroville boasts that it has never surrendered and that it has never been cleaned out.
In the silence, then, the rustler's hard breathing could be heard; his neck bulged red; only the eyes of his two comrades moved; Belllounds began to recover somewhat from his consternation. Fear had clamped him also, but not fear of personal harm or peril. His mind had not yet awakened to that. "You've got me pat! But who're you?" said Folsom, huskily. Wade kept silent.
The truth is, this little village, sixty miles from the railway, still retained in its dives and shanties the lingering miasma of the old-time free-range barbarism. It trailed a dark history on its legal side as well as on its openly violent side, for it had been one of the centres of the Rustler's War, and one of the chief points of attack on the part of the cattle-barons.
"I shore want to see the young feller you lied to me about," returned Dene, his smile slowly fading. "No speech could be a lie to an outlaw." "I want him, you Mormon preacher!" "You can't have him." "I'll shore get him." In one great stride Naab confronted and towered over Dene. The rustler's gaze shifted warily from Naab to the quiet Mormons and back again.
I recalled this magnificent spiritual something about him, remembered it strongest in the ring of his voice as he appealed to Bo Snecker not to force him to kill. Then I told how we left a dozen prisoners under guard and went back to the Hope So to find Blome where he had fallen. Steele's bullet had cut one of the petals of the rose Snecker had playfully put in the rustler's buttonhole.
"Believe me, I could kill the three of you if I wanted to, before you could turn around," she informed them calmly, "so you had better stand still till I tell you to move." She frowned down at the rustler's gun in her hand. There was something queer about that gun. "Hey, Burns," called the man in the middle, without venturing to turn his head, "come out of there and explain to the lady.
While the stool was still at the apex of its swing, he struck, with the strength of his shoulder behind the blow. It landed full on the rustler's jaw, and Hardy went crashing backward, heels over head, landing on the wreckage of the stool. For a moment he lay there, stunned. "Get up!" snapped The Kid crisply. "Theah's still mo' comin' to yo'."
Snap Naab stalked to and fro before the door of the cabin. He alone of the rustler's band showed restlessness, and more than once he glanced up the trail that led over the divide toward his father's oasis. Holderness sent expectant glances in the other direction toward Seeping Springs. Once his clear voice rang out: "I tell you, Naab, there's no hurry. We'll ride in tomorrow."
At the rate the first man was riding not five minutes would elapse before he would come out into the plain full upon the point where the man among the cattle was working at his fire. Ferguson and Miss Radford watched the scene with interest. Plainly the first man was intruding. Or if not, he was the rustler's confederate and the third man was spying upon him.
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