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I had no time to make inquiries, for my roving eye caught Frank Morton in the doorway, and evidently he wanted to attract my attention. He turned away and I followed. When I got outside, he was leaning against the hitching-rail. One look at this big rancher was enough for me to see that he had been told my part in Steele's game, and that he himself had roused to the Texas fighting temper.
In an hour he was at the house. A thoroughbred stood at the hitching-rail. Pete noticed that the animal carried Brevoort's saddle. Evidently there was to be more hard riding. As Pete entered the big room, he also noticed that Brevoort was heavily armed, and carried an extra belt of cartridges. Brent was examining a rifle when Pete stepped in.
A half-hour later we were tethering our cobs at the already crowded hitching-rail in front of a goodly mansion some mile or more beyond the camp limits on the northward road; a rambling manor house to the full as large as Appleby Hundred, with a shaven lawn in front, and within, lights and music and sounds of revelry.
Saturday night had come. As Whitey Wimble had predicted, the boys were showing up and Red Creek stood ready to lose something of its brooding afternoon quiet. Once again Packard crossed the bridge and made his way along the echoing wooden sidewalk to the Ace of Diamonds. A dozen saddle-horses were tied at the hitching-rail. Among them was Blenham's white-footed bay.
Racey had no illusions as to Thompson, but he obviously could not shoot him in the back. He let him go. Watching from a window he saw Thompson go to the hitching-rail in front of the saloon, untie his horse, mount, and ride away northward. And the blacksmith shop in front of which Peaches Austin was supposed to be on guard lay at the south end of the street. Where, then, was Thompson going?
Lucy Bostil had called twice to her father and he had not answered. He was out at the hitching-rail, with Holley, the rider, and two other men. If he heard Lucy he gave no sign of it. She had on her chaps and did not care to go any farther than the door where she stood. "Somers has gone to Durango an' Shugrue is out huntin' hosses," Lucy heard Bostil say, gruffly.
He must have recalled the hitching-rail, the sun, and the flies, and preferred to risk even a road that he did not know, for on he went quietly. We crossed the little knoll and the house came into view. The cry of exultation which rose to my lips was checked when I saw, stretching from the gate down the road, a long line of vehicles. The first held the hitching-post.
This was a large log cabin, roughly covered with clapboards, with a wide plank platform in front and a hitching-rail in the road. Several horses were standing there, and a group of lazy, shirt-sleeved loungers. "I'll be doggoned if it ain't Milt Dale!" exclaimed one. "Howdy, Milt, old buckskin! Right down glad to see you," greeted another. "Hello, Dale!
"I'm no errant-boy!" cried Anderson Crow so wrathfully that two or three boys snickered. "You're a darned old crank, that's what you are!" exclaimed the stranger angrily. Everybody gasped, and Mr. Crow staggered back against the hitching-rail. "See here, young man, none o' that!" he sputtered. "You can't talk that way to an officer of the law. I'll " "You won't do anything, do you hear that?
Beneath them there, with welcoming notes, his lone horse trampled about the hitching-rail. Dropping his cap the master folded the bride's hands in his and pressed on them a long kiss. The pair looked deeply into each other's eyes. Her brow drooped and he laid a kiss on it also. "Now you must go," she murmured. "My own beloved!" was his response. "My soul's mate!"
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