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Hooper whistled and four Mexicans appeared with ropes. Somehow I knew if they once hog-tied me I would never get another chance. Better dead now than helpless in the morning, for what that old buzzard might want of me. One of them tossed a loop at me. I struck it aside and sailed in. It had always been my profound and contemptuous belief that I could lick any four Mexicans.
"I'm hog-tied," answered Dingwell promptly. His mind worked swiftly. The man with the drop on him was Chet Fox, a hanger-on of the Rutherford gang, just as he had been seventeen years before when he betrayed John Beaudry to death. Fox was shrewd and wily, but no gunman. If Chet was alone, his prisoner did not propose to remain one.
Five minutes later, standing near one of the wheels of the chuck-wagon, gazing somberly at the men, who were carrying Kelso away, Randerson spoke grimly to Owen, who was standing beside him. "Pickett an' then Kelso! Both of them was sure bad enough. But I reckon Masten's got them both roped an' hog-tied for natural meanness." He turned to Owen.
"This gangster is a killer all right and drink and dope may have overcome the usual cautions of the breed. All of 'em are cowards; they prefer unarmed victims that are hog-tied. Sometime in his career this buzzard was the killer for some liquor gang. He evidently double-crossed his associates in getting this money that he's spending. He hides from them as well as the law.
"This racket is music, to the bellow of those steers. And it smells better here. If I go aboard again I'll be hog-tied. Why, I'd rather sit up all night and deal casino to a mad Chinaman!" "We'll manage somehow, dad." The girl turned to the door and her father followed her. He paused for a moment while he ran his eye up and down the busy street. "Looks like old times, doesn't it, Letty?"
When the shoeing operation had been neatly and quickly attended to and Baldy released from his uncomfortable position he struggled to his feet with heavy breaths, shook himself, and looked at his master. "How'd you like being hog-tied?" queried his conqueror, rubbing Baldy's nose. "Now, after this you'll have some manners."
Bannister leaped on the steer, tie-rope in hand. Swiftly his deft hands passed to and fro, making the necessary loops and knots. Then his hands went into the air. The steer was hog-tied. For a few seconds the judges consulted together. "Twenty-nine seconds," announced their spokesman, and at the words a great cheer went up. Bannister had made his tie in record time.
"Seventeen years I've been hog-tied to this house because of Beaudry. Think I'm going to miss my chance now? If he was Moody and Sankey rolled into one, I'd go through with it. And what is he a spy come up here to gather evidence against you and me! Didn't he creep into your house so as to sell you out when he got the goods? Hasn't he lied from start to finish?" "Maybe so.
He'd roped an' hog-tied a Circle L cow an' was blottin' our brand out." "What happened?" Lawler's lips were set in grim lines. "Nothin' followin' your orders regardin' the cuss. Davies an' Harris let him go after warnin' him. Somethin' ought to be done.
The professor has sure got me down and hog-tied so tight that I can't even think." "Perhaps, and again, perhaps not," returned Patches. "Reid hasn't found a buyer for the outfit yet, has he?" "Not yet, but they'll come along fast enough. The Pot-Hook-S Ranch is too well known for the sale to hang fire long."
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