KELVIN had decided not to force his company upon the people in the buckboard until he knew that he would be welcomed. True, he had Bud’s invitation, but Bud was only a boy. His sister might resent strangers coming to their camp.
As a rule the cattle buyer traveled without camping equipment, knowing there were few ranches, no matter how remote, which wouldn’t welcome a wayfarer. When necessary he hired a pack outfit. On this occasion there had seemed no need for one. Biggers and Fossum had assured him that there were scattered ranches all along the way. They had told him that he could make it from Curryville to Hopkins’ ranch in half a day.
He suspected that this ranch was the destination of the two young outlaws themselves, and that it was their intention to hold him up some time the next forenoon. He was curious to see if he had guessed rightly, so he had no intention of ramming into Hopkins’ ranch ahead of schedule. But he did wonder if the gay young riders wouldn’t try to hold up the buckboard.
He had purposely dallied along behind the buckboard until it grew dark, and then he had easily passed their camp in the shadows of the cliff. Had they had a dog he might have been discovered, but they hadn’t, and he could distinctly see them limned against the blackness beyond the fire.
A half mile above the park he had paused. He always carried the makings of a couple of meals rolled up in the blankets on the back of his saddle for emergencies, but he had eaten late, and he merely unsaddled, staked his horse out of sight of the road, and unrolled his blankets.
He didn’t go to bed. For a long time he sat with a blanket around his shoulders, and smoked; being careful to see that the glow from his cigaret was never visible from the road.
At last he caught a sound which a city man would never have been able to distinguish—the faint creaking of saddle leather from up the canyon. Instantly he rose, put out his cigaret, and walked over to his horse. With his hand over Mike’s nostrils he waited for the two horsemen to pass; then, silently as any Indian, he followed them.
The men were riding slowly, and he almost blundered upon them when they suddenly stopped. They continued on foot. From where they left their horses the glow of the camp-fire below could be plainly seen. Despite the darkness Chet recognized the two horses as the ones Biggers and Fossum had been riding. These bad boys of the range were certainly up to mischief.
He knew that they had delayed long enough to draw their bandannas over their faces, and now he proceeded to do the same thing. Then, gun in hand, he moved slowly toward the fire.
He wasn’t close enough to hear what was said, but he had a fine view of the little pantomime that was enacted beside the fire. He saw the three victims suddenly grow rigid, and then a single masked man advanced like a moving silhouette. He dared not get too close. To interfere with the hold-up there would be too dangerous to the people of the buckboard; so he had to be where he could beat the outlaws back to their horses.
He could dimly make out one outlaw keeping among the shadows while his companion did the robbing. First, he saw old Nevada rise and submit to search, and then back up against the fire. Then Bud was frisked by the same outlaw, and made to join Nevada. Chet was breathing hard when he saw the outlaw approach the girl and apparently order her to stand up.
Leda Harrison got up, but her every movement registered defiance. The outlaw was holding out his hand, but the girl was putting nothing into it.
They seemed to be having a spirited argument. The girl was pointing toward a satchel, which the outlaw finally investigated but apparently found little to his liking.
Then, suddenly, the girl made a desperate lunge to get in front of her brother, but the outlaw caught her arm and swung her back. For a moment the fellow held her close, and Chet hurriedly moved a rod closer. He stopped as he clearly heard the girl’s agitated voice.
“Let me go! If you touch my brother I’ll kill you.”
Chet couldn’t hear what the outlaws were saying, but he didn’t need to hear to know what it was all about. The second man was threatening to harm the boy unless the girl surrendered what they wanted. Chet knew that it was probably all bluff, and that if the girl held out they would go away. But the girl didn’t know that.
There was some more wrangling, and suddenly a pencil of yellow flame leaped out of the darkness from the unseen outlaw’s gun. At the sound of the shot Bud Harrison staggered and almost fell. He was caught by Nevada. The shot had blasted the heel off one of Bud’s new boots.
“Don’t, don’t shoot again,” the girl screamed wildly. “I’ll give you all I’ve got.”
“Don’t yuh do it, sis. Don’t yuh let ’em have it,” Bud cried out, but the girl had turned her back to the two outlaws, and Chet could see her reaching down into the front of her dress A moment later she turned back and handed something to the outlaw.
The fellow hurriedly thumbed the packet he had received, and then thrust it carelessly into his inside pocket. He seemed in no hurry to depart. The girl had backed toward the buckboard, while the fellow seemed to be joking her about something. Then, apparently, his companion interfered and he desisted. But he moved over to where Nevada’s rifle was lying, took the weapon by the barrel and flung it far down the canyon. It struck with a crash against a rock.
Chet hastily moved back to where the outlaws’ horses stood, and as they came back they were plainly visible against the firelight in the background. They were twenty feet distant when he spoke.
“Git ’em up, hombres, an’ raise ’em fast,” he ordered.
The outlaws stopped as if they had butted into a stone wall. For an instant there was the expected interval of hesitation while they debated whether to obey the startling command, or try to shoot it out. Chet had little fear as to what they would do. Given an instant to think they would know better than to try gunplay when they were already covered. And despite what he had just seen Chet didn’t figure the two to be real killers. They might kill if crowded, but they were more given to dare-deviltry than viciousness—or so he had sized them up that afternoon.
After that momentary hesitation their hands went up.
“That’s fine, boys,” Chet approved. “I don’t want a thing except what you took from those people there, but I can’t have you gummin’ up my game like that.”
“Who the hell are you?” Al Biggers growled.
“Just call me Nemesis,” Chet grinned. “Now just unbuckle your gun belts an’ let ’em drop. That’s the boy. Now step away from ’em. Fine. Now I’m gonna toss my hat on the ground, an’ I want yuh tuh put everything yuh got from those people in it. Don’t try holdin’ anything back, because I was watchin’ every move yuh made, an’ I know what yuh got.”
“All right, Mr. Knee Measles, you got the high card, but yuh can’t buck the Wild Ones an’ git away with it,” Al Biggers said.
Chet suspected that it was a teaser to find out if he was himself a member of the gang who didn’t know who they were.
“Wild Ones, me eye,” he jeered. “Stacked against real badmen you lads would look like Sunday-school boys.”
“Mebbe you wouldn’t be so hard yoreself, hombre, if yuh was stacked up against Kirk Holliday an’ Blackie Payne,” the man snarled. He had named the two chief leaders of the Wild Ones.
“Come on, drop that stuff in the hat,”
