"How are things stacking? Our friends the enemy getting busy yet?"asked Bannister, folding and addressing his note.
"That's what.Orders gone out to guard every road so as not to let you pass.What's the matter with me rustling up the boys and us holding down a corner of this town ourselves?"The sheepman shook his head."We're not going to start a little private war of our own.We couldn't do that without spilling a lot of blood.No, we'll make a run for it.""That y'u, Denver?" the foreman called softly, as the sound of approaching horses reached him.
"Bet your life.Got your own broncs, too.Sheriff Burns called up Daniels not to let any horses go out from his corral to anybody without hisO.K.I happened to be cinching at the time the 'phone message came, so I concluded that order wasn't for me, and lit out kinder unceremonious."Hastily the fugitives donned the new costumes and dominos, turned their notes over to Denver, and swung to their saddles.
"Good luck!" the punchers called after them, and Denver added an ironical promise that the foreman had no doubt he would keep."I'll look out for Nora--Darling." There was a drawling pause between the first and second names."I'll ce'tainly see that she don't have any time to worry about y'u, Mac.""Y'u go to Halifax," returned Mac genially over his shoulder as he loped away.
"I doubt if we can get out by the roads.Soon as we reach the end of the street we better cut across that hayfield," suggested Ned.
"That's whatever.Then we'll slip past the sentries without being seen.I'd hate to spoil any of them if we can help it.We're liable to get ourselves disliked if our guns spatter too much."They rode through the main street, still noisy with the shouts of late revelers returning to their quarters.Masked men were yet in evidence occasionally, so that their habits caused neither remark nor suspicion.A good many of the punchers, unable to stay longer, were slipping out of town after having made a night of it.In the general exodus the two friends hoped to escape unobserved.
They dropped into a side street, galloped down it for two hundredyards, and dismounted at a barb-wire fence which ran parallel with the road.The foreman's wire-clippers severed the strands one by one, and they led their horses through the gap.They crossed an alfalfa-field, jumped an irrigation ditch, used the clippers again, and found themselves in a large pasture.It was getting lighter every moment, and while they were still in the pasture a voice hailed them from the road in an unmistakable command to halt.
They bent low over the backs of their ponies and gave them the spur.The shot they had expected rang out, passing harmlessly over them.Another followed, and still another.
"That's right.Shoot up the scenery.Y'u don't hurt us none," the foreman said, apostrophizing the man behind the gun.
The next clipped fence brought them to the open country.For half an hour they rode swiftly without halt.Then McWilliams drew up.
"Where are we making for?"
"How about the Wind River country?"
"Won't do.First off, they'll strike right down that way after us.What's the matter with running up Sweetwater Creek and lying out in the bad lands around the Roubideaux?""Good.I have a sheep-camp up that way.I can arrange to have grub sent there for us by a man I can trust.""All right.The Roubideaux goes."
