into these, seh. Denver shucked them for me. That coyote must have noticed what we wore before he slid out. Y'u can bet the orders are to watch for us as we were dressed then.”
“What are y u going to do?”
“Me? I'm scheduled to be Aaron Burr, seh. Missou swaps with me when he gets back here. They're going to rustle us some white men's clothes, too, but we cayn't wear them till we get out of town on account of showing our handsome faces.”
“What about horses?”
“Denver is rustling some for us. Y'u better be scribbling your billy-doo to the girl y'u leave behind y'u, seh.”
“Haven't y'u got one to scribble?” Bannister retorted. “Seems to me y'u better get busy, too.”
So it happened that when Missou arrived a few minutes later he found this pair of gentlemen, who were about to flee for their lives, busily inditing what McWilliams had termed facetiously billets-doux. Each of them was trying to make his letter a little warmer than friendship allowed without committing himself to any chance of a rebuff. Mac got as far as Nora Darling, absentmindedly inserted a comma between the words, and there stuck hopelessly. He looked enviously across at Bannister, whose pencil was traveling rapidly down his note-book.
“My, what a swift trail your pencil leaves on that paper. That's going some. Mine's bogged down before it got started. I wisht y'u would start me off.”
“Well, if you ain't up and started a business college already. I had ought to have brought a typewriter along with me,” murmured Missou ironically.
“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 his O.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 hundred yards, 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.”
While they were nooning at a cow-spring, Bannister, lying on his back, with his face to the turquoise sky, became aware that a vagrant impulse had crystallized to a fixed determination. He broached it at once to his companion.
“One thing is a cinch, Mac. Neither y'u nor I will be safe in this country now until we have broken up the gang of desperadoes that is terrorizing this country. If we don't get them they will get us. There isn't any doubt about that. I'm not willing to lie down before these miscreants. What do y'u say?”
“I'm with y'u, old man. But put a name to it. What are y'u proposing?”
“I'm proposing that y'u and I make it our business not to have any other business until we clean out this nest of wolves. Let's go right after them, and see if we can't wipe out the Shoshone-Teton outfit.”
“How? They own the law, don't they?”
“They don't own the United States Government. When they held up a mail-train they did a fool thing, for they bucked up against Uncle Sam. What I propose is that we get hold of one of the gang and make him weaken. Then, after we have got hold of some evidence that will convict, we'll go out and run down my namesake Ned Bannister. If people once get the idea that his hold isn't so strong there's a hundred people that will testify against him. We'll have him in a Government prison inside of six months.”
“Or else he'll have us in a hole in the ground,” added the foreman, dryly.
“One or the other,” admitted Bannister. “Are y'u in on this thing?”
“I surely am. Y'u're the best man I've met up with in a month of Sundays, seh. Y'u ain't got but one fault; and that is y'u don't smoke cigareets. Feed yourself about a dozen a day and y'u won't have a blamed trouble left. Match, seh?” The foreman of the Lazy D, already following his own advice, rolled deftly his smoke, moistened it and proceeded to blow away his troubles.
Bannister looked at his debonair insouciance and laughed. “Water off a duck's back,” he quoted. “I know some folks that would be sweating fear right now. It's ce'tainly an aggravating situation,
