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  Tas had to get rid of his cud of tobacco before he could answer. Being in the presence of a lady, he turned his head respectfully before spitting it out.

  “Well, Martha, I reckon they ain’t no two ways about this,” he said weightily after wiping his mouth. “Bill’s got to git goin’. It’s one thing for the law to have a grudge ag’in yuh and quite another to be languishin’ in jail while the hombres that put yuh there is free to continue their deviltry.” He turned to Bill. “There ain’t nothin’ you can do for yore pa now half so important as what Martha has just said; that’s to get him justice.”

  “You’re right,” Luther agreed. “That goes for both of us. If I had a fresh horse—”

  “You can have this one,” Martha offered immediately. “I know it will be all right with Paint—”

  “Paint?” Bill echoed with a stab of jealousy. “What’s he got to do with it?”

  “It’s his horse,” said Martha, coloring unconsciously. “He broke her for me and brought her in the last time he came to town. I told him I couldn’t accept the mare, but he insisted on leaving her with our string. She hasn’t been ridden much.”

  Bill found a grain of satisfaction in that. He had once thought of offering Six-gun to her. That couldn’t be now, but he couldn’t help wondering what her answer would have been.

  Out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of horsemen crossing the flat. It pulled him up to sharp decision.

  “We’ll take the mare,” he got out gruffly. “Yank that saddle off in a hurry, Luther! We’ve got only a few seconds to make the change, for here comes Beaudry and his bunch now! They’ll see us as soon as they reach the cottonwoods!”

  Martha lost no time in dismounting. Little Bill had her saddle off before Luther was ready to drop his own on the mare. Tascosa had turned to watch the posse.

  “So you’re the cause of all this trouble,” he heard Martha say. Out of the corner of his eyes he saw her stroking Six-gun’s muzzle. “You’re a beauty!”

  “He’s most powerful bad luck, if you ask me,” Tas grumbled under his breath. “Get movin’!” he called out suddenly. “They got you located and they’re sure a-poundin’ leather!”

  “You ready, Luther?” Little Bill jerked out hoarsely as he swung up into his saddle.

  “Let ’em go!” Luther answered. He gave the mare the spurs.

  “Hurry, Bill!” Martha urged, her face bloodless.

  “I’m goin’,” he answered. “It may be some time before I see you again, but I’ll be thinkin’ of you …. If you remember it, I wish you’d say a little prayer for Pop—”

  “Good-bye—” she murmured, her eyes misting.

  The powerful gelding leaped away. In ten yards Little Bill had pulled Six-gun into a distance-devouring gallop.

  Chapter IX

  LITTLE BILL glanced back repeatedly at the posse. He had not expected Beaudry to hang on after it became apparent that they could not be overtaken.

  “Still back there, eh?” Luther asked.

  “Yeh, still trailin’ us, but we seem to be drawin’ a little away all the time.”

  “We’ll shake ’em off as soon as we get out of this flat country and run into a little scrub timber.”

  “I wasn’t thinkin’ of that,” said Bill. “I was just wonderin’ what’s makin’ Beaudry so anxious to grab us so suddenly. Sam thought he would hold off until the funeral was over. You can see by the way he’s hangin’ on now that he means business. You might think we’d just hoisted a bank.”

  “I suppose somebody repeated to him what you said about linkin’ him up with the Sontags. He evidently figgers you can do it.”

  They were between three and four miles out of Bowie by now. It was their intention to intercept the Sawbuck wagon and get their rifles and blankets. According to their calculations, Maverick should be nearing Cain Springs.

  “We’ll have to get some grub off Maverick,” said Little Bill. “We’ll head west then and make ourselves pretty hard to find for a few days.”

  Luther nodded and conversation died again for another ten minutes. Bill had thoughts of Martha Southard to temper his bitterness; Luther was not so fortunate.

  “I’ll never forget her comin’ to warn me,” Bill murmured to himself. “Some people are sure to talk me down and give me a bad name for this. I don’t care what they say if it don’t turn her against me.”

  The country was beginning to change. The treeless level plain southwest of Bowie was giving — to rolling, scrub-covered hills. Bill turned in his saddle to find Beaudry and his posse far behind.

  “We won’t change our course until we get in among the scrub,” he advised Luther. “They’ll think we’re headin’ for the Strip. If they keep after us, that’s the way they’ll go, stayin’ close to the Cimarron bottoms.”

  In a few minutes they lost sight of the posse and swung to the south for the springs. The gelding hadn’t raised a sweat. The mare Luther was riding was flecked with lather. She had evidently been on hard grain for weeks and had had far too little exercise. She was strong, however, and would toughen up in a hurry.

  An old stone house that dated back to the days of the Texas trail stood under the cottonwoods at Cain Springs. The Sawbuck wagon stood drawn up before it as Luther and Little Bill rode in. Maverick was watering his horses. He dropped his bucket on catching sight of them and stared his surprise.

  “What’s the idea of this?” he demanded banter-ingly. “You git chased out of town?”

  “That’s exactly what happened,” Bill informed him. “A lot of things have taken place since I saw you last, Maverick. We’re here to get our rifles and blankets. Want you to make us up a sack of grub too.”

  “Hunh?” Maverick grunted as their soberness was communicated to him. “Why, you boys mean it!”

  “We do, for a fact,” said Little Bill as he and Luther pulled their rolls out of the wagon. “I don’t know how much time we’ve got; just shake up anythin’ that’s handy. We can talk while you’re gettin’ it ready. You tell Tascosa we took this sack of cartridges.”

  Maverick threw some stuff together as Little Bill acquainted him with what had happened. Luther had walked back to a little ridge twenty-five yards beyond the house. He could see for some distance from the crest of it.

  “I’m sorry to hear all this, Bill,” Maverick asserted with a great wagging of his head. “You’re goin’ up against a bad bunch in them Sontags. I know some of ’em. You look out for Grat. He’s the kind what kills just to see a man kick. You got any plans?”

  “We’ll make our plans as we go along, Maverick. If you’ve got that sack ready I’ll tie it on my saddle.”

  “There it is! I’ll give yuh a little tobacco if—”

  He didn’t finish. Luther was running toward them.

  “Bill, they’re comin’!” Luther shouted. “They got this place surrounded! The best thing we can do is git our horses inside the house and stand ’em off! Maybe we can slip out tonight!”

  “Grab your horse then and get him in !” Bill snapped out. “You get that wagon rollin’ out of here, Maverick! There’ll be hell to pay in a muinte!”

  Neither the mare nor the gelding wanted to enter the house. It took precious seconds to get them inside. Maverick had leaped to the seat of the wagon and was lashing the team into a run.

  Inside the old stone house, roofless for many years, Little Bill and Luther waited grimly for the attack. To their surprise, minutes passed without bringing a shot or summons to surrender. The creaking of the wagon had died away in the distance.

  “You couldn’t have been mistaken, Luther?” Bill asked.

  “Not a chance! They’re here! Crawlin’ up behind that ridge like as not!” He flicked a glance at his brother. “You got any idea what we’re goin’ to do if they try to rush us?”

  “They’ll have a time gettin’ us out of here,” said Bill.

  “That ain’t answerin’ me! Are we goin’ to shoot to kill—that’s what I want to know! You can f
igger what it means if we do. It will put us outside the law for the rest of our lives.”

  “I know it,” Little Bill muttered gloomily. “Our hand is bein’ forced, but it ain’t my idea to shoot these men down if it can be helped; though killin’ is what they need. They won’t make much of an attempt to take us alive. If he can wash us out legally, Beaudry will do it.”

  “No doubt of it, Bill. With no witnesses around, I’m thinkin’ we wouldn’t git very far if we walked out of here with our hands in the air. It’s askin’ a lot of a man to expect him to hold off when he’s facin’ a bunch that’s dead set on wipin’ him out. But that’s what we’ve got to do.”

  Luther stationed himself to defend the door. Little Bill took the window. In just a second or two, Beaudry hailed them.

  “We got you birds dead to rights!” he yelled. “I’m callin’ on yuh to give yourselves up! I’ve got a warrant for yuh, Bill Stillings! Yuh better throw your guns away and walk out with your hands up! Do yuh hear me?”

  “We hear yuh all right!” Bill answered. “We ain’t givin’ ourselves up to you, Beaudry!”

  “You’re resistin’ arrest!” Cash yelled. “If you ain’t out of there in ten seconds we’ll smoke yuh out!”

  He counted ten. It was the signal for a crashing volley. The slugs ricocheted wickedly off the stone walls.

  “They’re all behind the ridge,” Bill told Luther. “Don’t get too near the door; they’ve got their guns trained on it!”

  For the next twenty minutes the posse poured a hail of lead into the house. The air began to reek with the acrid fumes of burnt powder. The blue haze of gun smoke drifted in through the open door and window. Six-gun and the mare didn’t like it at all. Little Bill and Luther still held their fire.

  “We better show ’em we know how to shoot,” Luther argued, “or they’ll think we don’t intend to. First thing we know they’ll try to reach that tree out there. If they do, it’ll be pretty hot for us in here.”

  The tree to which he referred stood halfway down the slope. A man could reach it from the top in ten strides. On the heels of another withering volley, Blackie Chilton leaped over the crest and made a rush for the cottonwood. From the house two streams of fire flashed through the haze.

  Chilton changed his mind in a hurry. In his anxiety to get back to cover he whirled so swiftly that he threw his gun away. He disappeared behind the ridge in a dive that landed him on his nose.

  “Didn’t touch him,” Luther grinned owlishly, “but I bet he felt them slugs burnin’ him as they went by.”

  “They’ll try it again,” said Little Bill. “Come at us in two ways the next time. If this smoke gets much thicker we won’t know what we’re shootin’ at.”

  Beaudry divided his forces now, as Bill had foreseen. Ten minutes later three of his men leaped over the crest to the left of the house and made a dash for the springs. Another ran for the tree that Chilton had failed to reach. This man was turned back too, but the other three made the rock watering-trough beside the springs.

  “They crease you, Bill?” Luther demanded anxiously as he saw a trickle of blood run down his brother’s cheek.

  “No, just a chip of rock caught me,” Little Bill muttered. He realized that the three men at the trough could advance under cover of a fusillade from their companions. “Things ain’t workin’ out so well for us,” he went on. “If those gents out there make a rush for the door we’ll have to drop ’em or it’ll be all over with us.”

  “It ain’t what we want to do,” Luther murmured gravely, “but there’s some things you can’t walk away from. I’m afraid I winged the hombre that tried to reach the tree.”

  “I’m goin’ to try to get ’em out from behind the trough,” Bill told him. “You hold Six-gun steady there in the corner so I can stand on the saddle. I’m goin’ to fire over the top of the wall. They’ll be right under my gun. I’ll give ’em a chance to back away if they want it. If they don’t take it, I’m goin’ to bust ’em, Luther.”

  “Get up there and Beaudry will pick you off from the ridge!” Luther warned. “Don’t you try it! I been thinkin’ things over, Bill. Maybe we made a mistake not to parley with them.”

  “What sense would there be in doin’ it? He wants our hides and nothin’ else!”

  “I’m goin’ to talk to him just the same. It’ll give this smoke a chance to rise.”

  “You’re wastin’ your time,” Little Bill protested impatiently. “But you go ahead if yuh want to.”

  Beaudry answered Luther’s hail.

  “Are yuh ready to come out?” he demanded.

  “What sort of a proposition will you make us if we do?” Luther yelled back. “We got plenty ammunition left.”

  “So have we,” Cash informed him, “and we got plenty of time! But I’ll make a deal with yuh, Luther, if you’ll come out.”

  “What sort of a deal?” Luther inquired sceptically.

  “It ain’t you we want,” Beaudry returned. “I’m inclined to be reasonable. Just walk out of there—”

  At that moment the three men at the trough made a rush for the door. Beaudry’s willingness to talk had been just a ruse to divert the attention of the two men in the house.

  Little Bill cried a warning, but before Luther could leap back a bullet tore a ragged gash across his cheek.

  “Pump that gun!” Bill screamed at him. He was firing madly himself.

  The three men fell back, one of them with a slug in his shoulder.

  “That settles it!” Little Bill raged. “They’d shoot yuh down even when yuh was parleyin’ with ’em! It’s them or us now, and we’re shootin’ to kill! Just bang away at anythin’ that shows!”

  Chapter X

  THE gunfire from the ridge was almost continuous now. It said plainer than words that Beaudry was getting ready to rush the house.

  “We better do somethin’ about this,” Bill told Luther. “I’m goin’ to drive those hombres back from the trough or come mighty close to it.”

  Although Luther protested, Little Bill made him hold Six-gun now as he stood up on the seat of his saddle.

  He was seen from the ridge as soon as he poked his rifle barrel over the top of the wall. The slugs began to ping and ricochet off the wall all about him, but in some miraculous way he escaped being hit.

  His own gun began to bark as he opened up on the men crouched down behind the trough. Although they flattened themselves to the ground, he could see them.

  Suddenly one of them let out a yell of pain, and flinging himself to his feet, beat a precipitate retreat.

  The others did not linger long.

  “Well, I sure smoked them out of there,” Bill muttered laconically as he slid down beside Luther.

  Luther flashed an incredulous glance at him.

  “Wonder those gents on the ridge didn’t make a sieve out of yuh,” he grumbled.

  Suddenly it was still. The minutes dragged by without a shot being fired.

  The better part of an hour passed.

  “Mighty still,” said Luther. “You don’t think they’ve drawn off?”

  “They’re still there,” Little Bill answered. “I’ll prove it to yuh.”

  He stuck his hat on his rifle barrel and held it up to the window. It was riddled instantly.

  “That didn’t git ’em anywhere,” Luther grinned. His face was a gory sight. He cocked an eye at the sun. It was getting hot in the old house. He saw that it still lacked an hour of noon. “It’s goin’ to get hotter in here,” he said. “We’ll be wantin’ water before the afternoon’s gone.” The springs would have been just as accessible a mile away as at the door.

  “The horses will need it more than us,” Little Bill returned. “It’ll make it tough for us tonight. Sure as fate when we try to get ’em out they’ll smell water and begin to act up. It’ll give our play dead away.”

  “We may have to go without ’em,” Luther suggested.

  Bill said no. “We wouldn’t have a chance on foot.”


  It wasn’t long before the posse’s guns opened up again. They kept up a desultory fire for a quarter of an hour. Suddenly then they began to bang in earnest. It dwarfed what had gone before.

  “Sounds like they’d got reinforcements,” said Luther.

  It was a moment or two before they realized that the slugs were no longer spattering against the walls.

  The posse seemed to have dropped back. In the course of a few minutes the heavy firing had moved completely away from the springs.

  Luther and Little Bill stared at one another in growing amazement.

  “What do you make of that?” Luther jerked out.

  “I don’t know. It may be a trick to encourage us to make a run for it. I’m goin’ to climb up on Six-gun and have a peek over the wall.”

  “You be right careful,” Luther urged. Then a moment later: “Do yuh see anythin’?”

  “Why, that’s Link out there!” Little Bill cried. “He’s ridin’ this way! Looks like that’s Scotty with him!”

  Luther ran outside recklessly.

  “It’s them all right!” he yelled. “Hey, Link!—Scotty!”

  “Yee-ah!” they screeched as they dashed up to the springs.

  Little Bill ran out to greet them.

  “What’s the meanin’ of this?” he demanded. “What are you boys doin’ here ?”

  “What do yuh think we’re doin’ ?” Link countered. “We didn’t lose no time gettin’ here when Maverick came in with word that Beaudry had you cornered.”

  “We just handed our respects to him,” Scotty drawled. “They’re fannin’ it away from here now.”

  “Not all of ’em,” Link corrected. “One is layin’ up there in the sage. Git your horses out of the house, boys, and we’ll look things over.”