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Updated: May 14, 2025
Rapidly he mentioned the names of the men he wanted and where they could be found, and Stratton and Jessup hastily departed. Outside they found three horses, their own, tied to the hitching-rack as they had left them, and a big, powerful black, who stood squarely facing the door, reins merely trailing and ears pricked forward. The two that had been there when they first rode up were gone.
"Then maybe he'd like a friend to fight by his side," said Buck simply. "So long, Joe!" The old man wrung his hand and then followed him out to the hitching-rack where Buck's horse stood. "Ain't Dan got no friends among the crowd?" asked Cumberland. "Don't they give him no thanks for catching the rest of Silent's gang?" "They give him lots of credit," said Buck.
While the sting of the cow-town whisky was still rankling in their throats a man entered the front door. "Oh, Bill," he called across the room, "your hoss is daid." Deserting the bar to delve into this mystery, they found the outlaw's pony stretched out beside the hitching-rack near the rear of the building. The owner cast one glance at the dead animal; then his eyes went to a shattered window.
They rode past the station, the bullet-scarred rain barrel behind which Tom Hargus took shelter in the great battle still standing in its place, and past the saloon, the hitching-rack empty before it, for this was the round-up season nobody was in town.
This morning, if such a thing were possible, they were more excited and angry than they had been the day before; but they did not fail to meet Marcy at the hitching-rack, or to talk to him as though they looked upon him as one of themselves. He noticed that they all held papers in their hands. "This thing is going to be stopped now, I bet you," said Mark Goodwin, who was the first to speak.
Once there rang out the high notes of a woman's hysterical laughter. Cowponies and packed burros drooped listlessly at the hitching-rack. Even loaded wagons were waiting to take the road as soon as the drivers could tear themselves away from the attractions of keno and a last drink. Junipero Street was not the usual crooked lane that serves as the main thoroughfare for business in a mining town.
"Oh, you are too good. Yes, I'll go, of course," Jo exclaimed. "Can't we go down to the grove and see the lilies this afternoon, too?" "Yes, we can go to China if we want to," Thaine declared. "Wait here in the shade until I drive up." Teams were being backed away from the hitching-rack, and much chatting of neighbors was everywhere.
"She must be intending to make a stay to turn him loose like that," remarked Bill Whallen. Further discussion yielding nothing but these same facts, the talk came round to horse-lore again. A while later, Whallen, having called for his mail and received none, stepped out of the post-office and ran his eye along the row of horses at the hitching-rack.
Hargus spoke in a low voice to Grace; she turned and ran toward her horse. The two at the hitching-rack swung into their saddles as Hargus, watching Grace over his shoulder as she sped away, began to back off, his hand stealing to his gun as if moved by some slow, precise machinery which was set to time it according to the fleeing girl's speed.
"Why why, dod-gast you, sir, what do you think I am a hitchin'-post?" exploded on the lips of the new detective. His face was flaming red. "You'll have to excuse me, my good man, but I thought I saw a hitching-rack as I drove up. Ah, here it is. How careless of me. But say, I won't be in the store more than a second, and it doesn't seem worth while to tie the old crow-bait.
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