long as you live.'
She walked out of the hotel followed by her
Another reason for leaving was urgent in her mind. She wanted to phone to the Seven Up and Down news of the trap into which Frank and his companion had fallen.
HAL GUESSED they would have a few minutes before the attack. These fellows were not going to walk up to two rifles without contriving some way of making it as safe as possible. The trapped men could count on that as surely as on the certainty that next time there would be no wasted shots. They had tried Tick Black's way. Now it would be one devised by Cash Polk.
Frank stayed on guard in the front room while Hal looked after the defenses in the rear. The back door was locked and bolted. Hal piled the kitchen table and chairs against it. On a shelf he found a stack of old newspapers. These he crumpled and flung under the two windows until there was a mound of them knee-high. If anybody came in through a window, he could not reach the floor without a warning rustle of paper.
Through the swing doors Hal returned to the dining-room.
'All quiet on the western front,' Frank reported.
Helen Barnes and her followers came out of the hotel and passed down the street. She stopped in front of the Rest Easy and called to somebody inside the saloon. A man carrying a Winchester rifle came to the door and stepped quickly back of her. He was not letting himself be a target for a shot from the restaurant. The girl talked with him for two or three minutes. Once the beleaguered men heard her voice raised in urgent argument, but the distance was too far for them to make out what she said. Presently the little party walked down the sidewalk as far as the Flack store. They disappeared into it.
'Zero hour pretty soon,' Frank said. His voice was a little strained. Waiting for the enemy to make its move was trying on the nerves.
'They might get at us if we are not careful from the hotel upstairs windows,' Hal replied. 'They won't come ramping across the street at us, unless they have lost their senses.'
'No. I wonder what they will do.' Frank grinned. He meant to keep up a good front. 'I'm getting some good army training anyhow. I'll bet there won't be another fellow in my company get under fire as he was on the way to being inducted.'
They caught a glimpse of a man slipping across the canon road from the back door of the hotel. Just after they saw him, he disappeared over the brow of a small hill. Their guess was that he was carrying instructions to the outposts watching the back door of the restaurant. The plan might be to drum in a heavy fire from the rear and under cover of it to slip across the road for a try at shooting the defenders through the windows.
Neither of them was under any delusion as to the determination of their foes to rub them out. Frank had tried to reach the Seven Up and Down to get reinforcements and found the wire from the restaurant cut. They could thank Cash Polk for thinking of that. The significance of it stood out like a sore thumb. The hill men intended to settle this before any help from outside reached their victims. There must be eight or ten of them in Big Bridge. Later they would try to escape the law by sticking to a common story that Stevens had fired the first shot.
The minutes dragged. Frank lit a cigarette.
'I got you into this, Hal,' he blurted. 'If I hadn't fooled with those poker games, you wouldn't be here.'
'And if I hadn't butted into the game you wouldn't be here,' Stevens answered evenly. 'I've been in spots just as hot before and wiggled out. I'm expecting us to get out of this one.'
'I don't see how.'
'Nor I yet. We've got to wait tor a break.'
Hal spoke more confidently than he felt. The few residents of the town would not dare to stand up to these ruffians from the hills. Given time, their enemies could smoke them out.
A bullet crashed through a window and tore a hole in the top of a table. It must have come from a rifleman stationed in an upstairs room of the hotel. Almost before the sound of it had died away, the rat-tat-tat-tat of a submachine gun began popping. Somebody in the brush at the rear was peppering the back of the building.
'This is it,' Frank said. 'They'll come tearing in the back way.'
'Not just yet. They are feeling us out — softening us up. I'll slip into the kitchen and see if I can get a crack at the busy boy in the mesquite.'
'I wouldn't. He'll spray the whole room.'
'He has quit for the moment. All I want to do is to let him know we can still sting.'
Hal crept through the swinging doors on all fours, reached a window, and looked out. He saw a surprising sight. A man was moving out of the bushes into the open, his hands in the air. At his heels, a revolver pressed into his back, another man walked with him stride for stride. They were headed for the restaurant. Hal tore away the chairs and the table that blockaded the door. He drew back the bolt and turned the key. The two men walked into the kitchen, and Hal slammed the door shut, bolted, and locked it.
'Where in Mexico did you come from?' Hal asked the man with the gun.
The man was a narrow-flanked, lean-shouldered customer wearing a white sombrero, hickory shirt, and corduroy trousers tucked into cowboy boots. He cocked an eyebrow whimsically at Stevens.
'From Salina, Kansas, if you're taking the census, fellow. Born in Lima, Ohio, twenty-five years ago come next Christmas Day.'
Tom Wall was the name of the man. He had spent six weeks at a line cabin on the M K ranch the winter before, a man wanted by the law for murder. Hal had not only kept him hidden; he had dug up the evidence to prove that the killing had been done in self-defense.
The captive he had brought with him out of the brush spoke bitterly. 'The boys will get you for this, Tom. This wasn't any row of yours.'
Wall disagreed with that lightly. 'Any of Hal's rows are mine. Tell the boys to like it or lump it, whichever they please.'
While they tied up their prisoner, Wall explained that he was working at a garage in town. When he had heard that Stevens was one of the two trapped in the restaurant, he had buckled on his gun and started on the warpath. He had chanced to see Mullins heading for the brush and had thought it a good idea to follow him unobserved. His order to the hill man to drop his weapon had been one Mullins recognized reluctantly he must obey.
The guns were sounding again in front. One roared out louder than the others. Hal pushed open the swing doors.
'You all right, Frank?' he asked.
'Yep. The shots are coming from the Rest Easy and the hotel. One bullet chipped the wall almost back of me. I took a crack at the fellow upstairs.' Frank turned and caught sight of Wall dragging in the captured man. 'Where did Tom come from?' he cried in astonishment.
'He saw what Mullins was up to and got the drop on him.'
Hal's smile was ironic. 'He picked this as a good place to eat. Maybe he is right at that. If this siege lasts long, we ought to be well provisioned.'
'It won't last long,' Mullins growled. 'The boys will come right in after you.'
'Some of them,' Hal corrected gently. 'A few of them will stop before they get here.'
Another bullet tore through one of the shattered windows and splintered the leg of a chair.
'Better get back against the wall, Tom,' advised Hal. He dragged the prisoner to a less exposed place than the one where he was lying.
They heard the noise of an automobile coming down the street. It stopped directly in front of the hotel. Hal risked a peep through the window below which he was crouched. He saw armed men jumping down from the car, four or five of them. Casey and Shorty were two of them. Dale Lovell was at the wheel.
Hal called across to Frank, 'The whole Seven Up ranch has moved in.'
The boy gave a whoop and started to his feet.
