begged.
A second man had joined his captor. Mullins's frightened eyes shifted to Arnold and back to Stevens. The stomach muscles of the rustler had gone lax from fright.
The man in the other pen had heard shuffling movements and looked across. Where there had been one man there were now three.
'Who is it, Ed?' he cried. 'Is everything all right?'
Hal was afraid the shaky voice of Mullins would give them away. He decided to do the talking himself. A good mimic, his slow drawl was an excellent imitation of Polk.
'It's Cash, Bill. Something unexpected has broke. Come over and I'll explain.'
Whatever suspicion had been in Bill's mind vanished when he heard the voice of Polk. He came across an empty pen to join them. While he was astride the fence, both hands on the top rail, the sharp summons came to stay there and let his ringers remain exactly where they were. A gun covered him not three feet from his belly. Bill Nuney was a game man, but he knew when not to fight. Before it would be possible for him to draw, this man could pour bullet after bullet into him.
'All right,' Nuney said quietly. 'What's yore game?'
'Come down,' Hal ordered, 'leaving your hands on the rail.'
Bill came down and Arnold disarmed him. Nuney knew Stevens by sight, though Hal did not remember having seen him before. The young rustler looked the cattleman over hardily. 'When I saw a guy standing back of Ed, I might have known it would be you,' he said disgustedly. 'You certainly enjoy buttin' in where you're not wanted.'
Hal liked the young scamp's audacity. Moreover, unless he had misunderstood the talk he had overheard, Bill had served notice to Mullins that murder was not his game and he would have nothing to do with it.
'I'm an annoying character,' Hal admitted. 'But we won't have time to go into that tonight. Ranny, if you'll ride herd on the gentlemen, I'll get busy. Better have them sit down against the fence so that they won't be tempted to try suicide by jumping you.'
Hal got the axe he had brought with him, climbed the fence, and watched his chance. As the cattle milled past him, he selected a steer and swung the butt of the axe against its forehead. The animal went down almost at his feet, dead before it struck the ground. The rest of the stock, excited by the smell of blood, rushed around wildly for a minute.
'Look out they don't trample you,' Arnold called to him.
'They'll quiet in a minute and huddle in the other side of the corral,' Hal said.
Already he had his knife out and was on his knees. He cut a circle through the hide around the brand and ripped off the enclosed skin. This he rammed into his pocket. In another minute he was outside of the pen with the other men.
From where he sat in the dust, Nuney looked up at him. 'Smart as a new whip, aren't you? Maybe too smart. I know some fellows who aren't going to take this well. If I were you I'd hire about six bodyguards.'
'Thanks,' answered Hal. 'And while free advice is going, let me give some, Bill. Better get out of this part of the country and lose yourself while there is still time. The rustling game here is played out. It's the penitentiary for you if you stick around.'
'If I get you right, you're not putting us in the calaboose tonight then,' Nuney said.
'Not tonight. Too busy. You can drift as soon as you like, but we'll keep your weapons.'
Nuney rose and dusted his trousers. 'You'd be surprised, Mr. Stevens,' he said lightly, 'but maybe you have made an honest man of me. I don't like the way this thing is developing. I'm no killer, and sure as God made little apples you are marked for death unless you watch yore step. Your advice is good medicine — and so is mine.'
'You talk too much,' Mullins growled. 'Let's beat it.'
'Have you a car down here?' Arnold asked.
'No,' Nuney replied. 'They were going to pick us up.'
'Wait here till we have gone, and don't hurry to catch up with us,' the Government man ordered.
'Suits me,' Nuney said. 'Our shift isn't over anyhow.' He laughed wryly. 'We're going to have a hell of a story to tell the boys.'
As Hal and Ranny walked back to town, they decided it would be better not to try to reach their car. They could telephone to the hotel later to take care of it. James Hunter lived in a hill suburb north of town. He had two cars and would probably lend them the small one. They must leave as soon as they could, for when Brick Fenwick heard what had occurred at the Gibson yards he would not lose a moment.
JAMES HUNTER led the way into the living-room of his house and turned on his tormentors. He was in pajamas and dressing-gown, and sleep was not yet wholly rubbed out of his eyes. A solid man, square-shouldered and well-set-up, even under the present unfavorable circumstances he retained a certain dignity and poise.
'Now what do you want?' he demanded. 'Your story has to be good after waking me up in the middle of the night.'
'We want to borrow yore car for a joyride,' Hal told him, eyes twinkling impudently.
'What for?' he snapped. 'You have a car of your own.'
'We have and we haven't,' the cattleman explained. 'Our idea is that four or five men with guns are hanging around it waiting for us.'
'What have you been up to — that burglary you were hinting about?'
'We took your advice and dropped that idea.' Hal grinned. 'All they can send you to jail for is being accessory to a hold-up after the fact. Probably you won't get more than a couple of years if you throw yourself on the mercy of the court.'
'Stop talking in riddles and spill your story,' the banker ordered.
Hal told him briefly the tale of the night's adventures. The comment of Hunter was tart. 'After the Lord made you, I hope he broke the mold. I've seen a lot of hella-milers in my time, but you take the cake.'
This criticism did not quite express Hunter's real feeling. He had spent an adventurous youth, and young Stevens carried him back to the carefree days when he had lived in the open and spent months in the hills on the trail of horse thieves and bandits. As a solid citizen it was his duty to disapprove of his friend's audacious methods of countering crime. Arizona was a civilized state, and this reversion to the wild days of its territorial status was outdated. Yet he felt a queer lift at being dragged even into the outskirts of such jeopardy. Vicariously at least he could experience for an hour the old untamed frontier license.
'I'm a Government officer,' Arnold reminded their host.
'And you know very well that Washington would repudiate such high-handed ways of getting evidence if it turned out these men you held up were not guilty.'
Hal pulled from his pocket the strip of hide he had skinned from the dead steer. 'We haven't had time to examine our evidence yet,' he said. 'Maybe we have been holding up good honest citizens and are headed for the penitentiary.'
From another pocket he took a magnifying glass. The bit of hide he put on a table with a newspaper under it. He scanned deliberately both the hairy and the inner sides of the hide patch they had risked their lives to get, after which he handed the glass to Arnold. Ranny took a long look, and so in turn did the banker.
'The brand has been doctored, I think,' Hunter said at last, 'but I don't know whether a jury would accept that as proved.'
'It would after it had looked at magnified photographic charts,' Hal said confidently. 'The difference between the old marking and the new would show very clearly.'
'Whose brand is this 0 B in a Box?' Hunter asked.
'We'll find that out tomorrow, but I'll give you ten to one that it is registered in the name of one of Black's gang,' Hal replied. 'The original brand is a J Bar. It belongs to an Easterner named Walsh who bought out an oldtimer last year.'
He took the magnifying glass a second time and inspected the markings on the hide. His trained eye saw clearly that the J of the first branding had cut deeper into the hide than the
