cactus that offered concealment. Hal scanned every dark mass as he hitched his body into greater danger. At times he lay crouched for several minutes without moving. He had to be sure that what looked like a bush was not a sitting man.
Smoke tickled his nostrils, and there was a slight luminosity in the atmosphere. Somebody had lit a fire. The moon was obscured by scudding clouds, but, when Stevens and Arnold looked into the draw from back of a heavy screen of vegetation, there was sufficient light to make out the dark forms of men against the background of the fire and the shapes of several trucks.
The night raiders had made coffee. One of them was pouring it into the cups held by others. Two or three were lounging on the ground at ease. The small glow from their cigarettes went on and off like fireflies in the night. The watchers could hear voices, though the distance was too far to understand what was said.
Hal could not see the branding irons, but he knew they were being heated to change the marks of ownership on the cattle in the trucks. He was pretty sure the steers had been stolen from some pasture in the Soledad Valley. There was a chance that they belonged to him.
'Could we get closer, so as to identify some of them?' Arnold whispered in the ear of his friend.
Hal shook his head. 'Too big a risk. We'll do better playing it safe.'
The cattleman knew from a dozen experiences this indolent ten minutes while the irons were heating before branding began. A man strolled to the fire and with a long rod raked the coals around the irons. A wave of laughter followed a remark one of the group had evidently made. Occasionally some unseen animal stretched out its head and mooed plaintively.
From a truck a roped steer was dragged down a landing ladder. Lariats snaked out and caught its feet. Taken by surprise, it fell heavily. A man sat on its head. Others drew the ropes tight. An expert applied the branding iron, careful to make sure the burn was enough and no more. It scrambled to its feet, dazed and bewildered, to be pushed and prodded up the ladder into the truck. Presently another bawling steer took the place of the first. The branding went on for hours. Even from the distance where the two watchers lay, the acrid smell of burnt hair and flesh could be savored.
When the job was done, the trucks drove away, followed by the sedan. Stevens and Arnold had not waited till the branding was finished. They had slipped away to the road and were lying behind some prickly pears when the procession passed on the way to town. The moon was under cover again as the trucks rolled by, so that it was not possible to recognize the drivers. But it slid out from a cloud before the sedan appeared. Hal did not know the man at the wheel, nor could he identify the two in the dark rear seat. But the other rider in the front seat was Brick Fenwick.
HAL KNEW it was not necessary for them to follow the trucks closely. They would be unloaded at the packinghouse pens. As a precaution, since the thieves knew Stevens and his guest were in town, a guard of at least two men would be left with them until morning. Gibson would take no chances. This new shipment would be butchered and the hides disposed of at once. The situation boiled down to this, that any proof of brand-blotting obtained would have to be got during the night.
The difficulty of getting evidence was increased by the fact that if the outlaws caught sight of them anywhere, a battle would almost certainly be precipitated. They could not shoot down the guards left at the stockyards nor could they make an investigation in their presence.
'Looks as though we are stymied,' Arnold conceded.
'Yes,' Hal agreed. 'We'll have to be lucky to hole out.' He added with a grin: 'We're too blamed lawful in our lawlessness.'
They decided that their best chance was to go down to the pens and hang around watching for an opportunity. The bandits might make a mistake. Five minutes inside the corral would be long enough if they were not interrupted.
Hal slipped down with a torch into the basement of the hotel to find a weapon necessary for the job. He discovered one in the furnace room, an axe used for splitting firewood and kindling.
Since there was a chance that the enemy might be watching their car, they decided to go to the packing house on foot. By way of the service entrance they slipped from the building into the alley back of the hotel, then cut across a vacant lot, which brought them to a narrow, unpaved road running parallel with the main one. Along this they trudged for nearly a mile before coming to the back fence of the Gibson plant. The sky had cleared, but the moon was down. They would have to be careful to avoid being seen.
Hal scouted the terrain, leaving his companion in the brush that grew thick almost to the fence. Owing to the limited activity of the company, most of the pens were empty. Those occupied were the ones close to the building. Hugging a fence, he drew near to an enclosure in which steers were moving about restlessly, protesting by uneasy bellows the indignity they had suffered. He felt sure these must be part of the consignment just trucked to the yards, because just before dark he had circled the pens and all but one had been empty.
Somebody in an adjoining corral grumbled a complaint to another unseen guard. 'Why do we have to draw this damned graveyard shift, Bill?' he wanted to know sulkily. Hal thought the voice was that of Mullins. He could vaguely see the man sitting on the fence.
From another pen a man answered, cheerfully enough. 'Someone has to do it, Ed. It's past three o'clock now. You can sit in the back seat on the way home and snooze.'
'I notice Brick ain't taking a turn.'
'Brick is sore about being dragged to jail. He'll get over it. No use stirring him up. It would only raise a rumpus.'
'And what makes you think we'll be headin' for home in the morning? Cash good as said there was another job to do.'
'Not for me,' Bill answered. 'If it's the one Brick was talking about, I'm out.'
The nearer man struck a match to light a cigarette. Back of the cupped hand shielding the flame Hal recognized the face of Mullins.
Hal edged back, in the shadow of the fence, at first slowly, later with more speed. He rejoined Arnold and told him what he had found out. 'If they were in the same pen we might hold them up,' he concluded. 'But it isn't likely we could take both of them by surprise.'
'No.' Arnold offered a suggestion. 'If we could get close enough to cover one and keep him from yelling to the other, we might make him call the other.'
'Might be done,' Hal assented. 'The second man would hear our voices, but if his pal was scared enough, we could make him say we were some of the gang.'
'And if he didn't scare but started shooting?'
Hal thought that out. 'Mullins isn't very game, Ranny. He'll scare. Point is, can we stop him before he lets out a yell?'
'There's only one way to find out,' Arnold said with a wry grin. 'I don't like this. It's a long shot. But we'll have to take it.'
'Yes. If I can get near enough before he sees me, the surprise might hold him.'
They worked back toward the pen where Mullins had been. The gray light of dawn was beginning to sift into the sky, but it had not yet scattered the darkness below. Yet Hal knew their time was running out. What they had to do must be done quickly. It had been arranged that Arnold would hang back and let Hal attempt the hold-up alone. If it was successful, he would at once pile over the fence and assist with the second guard.
Hal crept forward, close to the ground. He circled the fence of the corral where Mullins sat on the top rail, his back to the approaching man. There was a rifle across the guard's knees. He put it down against a post to light another cigarette. The match had just flared when a voice not four feet away sent a shiver of fear down his spine.
'Make a sound, Mullins, and I'll pump lead into you,' it whispered.
The match went out. Mullins opened his mouth to yell and clapped a hand over it to stop himself.
'Slide down on this side of the fence,' Hal ordered.
Mullins swung his legs over and came to the ground. He was trembling violently. 'Don't shoot,' he
