'Through field-glasses I saw a car filled with these men go down the valley road,' Dale explained. 'I recognized two of them, so I thought we had better follow. Well, it's all over now. There won't be any more trouble.'
'Won't there?' Hal asked, almost in a murmur.
Helen flung a startled look at him. 'You don't think they will try again?'
'They have gone too far to quit now.'
'What's it about — rustling?'
'More than that. Creating a black market. Killing a Government man who came here to investigate. They have to destroy the evidence that would send half a dozen of them to death.'
The girl was shocked. She had not realized that this was anything more than a modern version of the old trouble between cattlemen and rustlers.
'What Government man did they kill?' asked Helen.
'He boarded at your restaurant. Passed as a preacher named Andrew Watts.'
'Do you mean Mr. Watts wasn't a preacher?'
'He was sent here to find out who was creating the black market by supplying the beef. You thought he fell off a cliff. That is not true. He was captured by the gang, taken up on the cliff, and pushed off.'
'How do you know?'
'They left evidence. It had rained the day before. I found that four horses had climbed the shoulder of the cliff that day. I don't think the fall killed the victim immediately. They rode down to the foot of the cliff and bashed his head in. The wound could not possibly have been made from the fall. He struck on the right shoulder. This was on the left side of the head.'
The startled eyes of Frank were fastened on Stevens in a horrified fascination. 'I heard Cash and Brick tell how they found the preacher's body and rode to your place, the nearest ranch, for help to bring it in. I never guessed there was foul play.'
'If this is a secret, why are you telling it now?' Dale asked.
'It does not matter any more. This is out in the open now. The Government wants it known. Some day one of the gang, when the hunt gets hot, will come in and offer state's evidence.'
'You hope,' Wall said.
'If not, the case may be broken open anyhow.'
'I begin to understand why these outlaws are so persistent,' Dale said. 'Rustlers are always on the defensive. They don't carry the war to cattlemen, but skulk around in the brush. It's not their rustling that worries these miscreants, but the fact that Uncle Sam wants them for murder.'
'The two things tie up together,' Hal suggested.
The whole party ate a midday dinner at the restaurant.
Before all of them were finished, Dale asked Shorty to saunter down Main Street and find out if the hill men had yet left town. He reported that they were getting ready to go.
'They been drinkin' their dinner at the Rest Easy,' he drawled. 'That young plug-ugly Brick Fenwick is sitting on the porch steps lookin' like he had swallowed a half a bottle of quinine.'
He was still sitting there when Hal strolled out of the restaurant. Stevens stood in the doorway. The rest of his group would join him in a minute or two. His glance picked up casually the three men across the street. The sight of them tightened his stomach muscles and brought him to rigid attention.
THOUGH HAL stood in the warm sunlight, a cold chill ran through him. He had walked into a trap. Brick was rising from the hotel steps, gun in hand. Hanford stood at the corner of the Rest Easy. To the right, in front of the grocery store next to the restaurant, Frawley had stationed himself. The hill men had cut Hal off on three sides. With luck he might get back into the restaurant alive, but he knew they would be hard on his heels. In the crash of guns that would follow, the women must be endangered.
He thought in quick, flashing stabs. Retreat was out of the question. He must get away from the front of the eating house, so that bullets would not tear into it. His hand reached back and closed the door. Without haste he took a few steps along the sidewalk toward Hanford.
Brick followed him step for step. 'Stay where you're at, fellow,' he ordered, from between clamped teeth. 'You got no women to hide behind now.'
It was a showdown. Hal had not the least doubt of that. They intended to riddle him with bullets. His whole mind was concentrated on the problem, searching for some slender chance of escape. He could find none. They were three to one, and they had their guns out while he had not drawn.
'Don't tell us you've left yore gun at home,' Frawley jeered.
Hal saw nothing except these three men whose eyes were fastened on him so steadily. Yet afterward he recalled that the same brindle pup that had entered the danger zone before was trotting forward again. Moreover, he knew that somebody had opened the door of the restaurant.
'Shut that door,' he warned. 'Don't let the women out.'
The first glance told Casey that the battle was about to begin. With his left hand he closed the door behind him and held on to the knob.
'Don't start anything, boys,' he pleaded. 'Not with the women here.'
'You're not in this, Casey,' his former foreman snarled. 'Get back into the house.'
After the first brief glance, none of them paid any attention to Casey. Their whole tense interest was focused on Stevens. Hal knew this was the preliminary war of nerves. They were trying to break him down before the weapons crashed. That they had him cold they knew, but if they could flood him with fear, it would be an extra margin of safety for them.
'What are you waiting for?' he asked. 'Some more of your friends to show up?'
Even as he spoke, his hand was sweeping out the revolver from its holster. Their weapons were smoking while he was diving for the scant shelter of the nearest doorway. The sound of their shots went smashing down the street tunnel before he got into action. He crouched, flattened against the jamb, flinging his first bullet at Brick. A slug ripped at the woodwork beside him. Another tore the hat from his head. Though he counted himself a dead man, he was quite cool and deliberate. Frawley could not easily get at him in the recess where he stood, so Hal fired at Brick a second time and then at Hanford. Casey had his sixshooter out. The bark of it joined the others. The hammering of the guns filled the roadway with the sharp explosions.
Brick moved closer, knees bent, face venomous with hate.
Hanford shifted position warily, coming to the edge of the sidewalk across the street. Hal's gun covered him. It jumped with the crook of the finger. The heavy body of Hanford plunged forward into the street. The weapon dropped from his hand. He rolled over, lay still.
The door of the restaurant opened and men poured out.
Jolted by the sight of Hanford lying sprawled on the road and by the arrival of reinforcements for his enemy, Frawley turned and ran. Brick stayed to pump one last shot at Stevens before going, then backed into the Rest Easy and raced through it to the alley in the rear.
A moment before, the street had been empty except for the fighters and one stray brindle pup streaking down the road. Now a dozen people jostled one another as they crowded forward to look at the dead man.
'Are you — all right?' Dale asked Hal, her voice low and shaky. The girl's face and lips were colorless.
'Yes. They were waiting for me, hoping I would come out alone.'
Casey said,'I thought you were gone when I saw all three of them with their guns on you.'
Hal nodded thanks. 'They gave you a chance to get away, but you didn't take it. I think that saved me. You divided their attention when you began shooting.'
'Is one of them… dead?' Dale questioned.
'The one called Hanford,' answered Hal. 'They kept crowding closer.'
'You killed him in self-defense,' she replied. 'We all know that.'
Their eyes met and held for a long second. She knew what he was thinking, that Tom Wall, too, had slain a man because it had been forced upon him and she had thought of him as a killer, a man set apart by reason of what
