'One of his men saw him heading that way.' A pulse of anger leaped into her voice. 'What is he trying to do alone? Hasn't he any sense?'
'The crazy things he does seem always to come out right. It will be that way this time too.'
'There are some men on the valley rim this side of the M K,' the girl cried. 'Wait a minute.' She ran into the house and returned with field glasses.
After a long look she handed the glasses to her foreman. The men were on horseback, but were too far away to be identified.
'They are starting down into the valley,' Casey said. 'What for?'
'Look!' Dale pointed across the pasture to the mouth of Frenchy's Draw. Two men had come out of it and were running across the meadow. She snatched the glasses from Casey and with them picked up the two on foot. 'I believe—'
Dale broke off her sentence and gave a sharp order. 'Get that car going and pick me up here.' She ran into the house and was back in time to meet Casey in the sedan. He flung open the door without quite stopping and the girl jumped in beside him. She had a rifle in her hand.
'They are boiling into the pasture to cut those fellows off,' the foreman said. 'How many of them?'
He was busy keeping the car in the road. They were racing downhill as fast as he dared, and he must watch where he was going.
'Five of them,' Dale answered. 'Hal is one of the two.'
Casey slackened for the gate. She jumped out and flung it wide. In another moment she was beside him again.
The horsemen were firing as they galloped, Dale could see the spurts of dust flung up where the bullets struck. Fortunately, none of the riders pulled up to take careful aim. They did not want to lose the chance of cutting off the runners from the ranch house.
It would be a near thing. The car would beat the hill men to their prey, but the pickup would be under the fire of the rifles. Over the grass bumps travel was rough, and at the speed they were making the sedan pitched like a bucking bronco.
Casey gauged the distance carefully to avoid loss of even a second. He swept the car around in a circle just in front of the runners. Mullins glanced at his friends in the saddle, undecided whether he had better make a bolt to escape. But the rifles were spitting at him, and he had no time to explain he was no enemy. Hal pushed him forward into the rear seat and fell on top of him.
Dale's rifle roared at the attackers. She fired again as Casey completed the circle and dashed for the ranch house. Hal took the weapon from her, crashed the butt through the rear window, and answered the fusillade hammering at the car. Bullets spattered around them. Two or three struck the car. One must have hit the gas tank, for a jet of gasoline spurted from it.
The sound of the firing back of them grew fainter as the distance from the attackers grew greater. The car left the pasture and ran up the hill road to the house.
'They are still coming,' Hal warned. 'We had better get inside and lock up.'
Piling out of the car, they ran into the house and locked the doors, after which they fastened the windows and lowered the blinds. Susie followed her young mistress from the kitchen. She was fat, forty, and very black.
'Wha's all the rumpus about?' she demanded.
'You'd better go down into the basement, Susie,' Dale said. 'Some of the rustlers are attacking us.'
'I ain't goin' down into no cellar,' Susie answered. 'I stays right here with yo' folks.'
Hal was busy tieing up the prisoner. 'You had better take your own advice,' he told Dale. 'Casey and I will hold the fort.'
'I'm too busy.' Dale went to the telephone and called up the M K ranch. When she had got the connection, she said: 'This is Dale Lovell. Mr. Stevens is here at the ranch. A lot of his enemies are outside. I think we are going to be attacked.'
Wall was at the other end of the line. He promised help as soon as he could gather a few men.
'They are down at the bunkhouse deciding what to do,' Casey announced from one of the windows. 'Fenwick is one of them — and Frawley another.'
Hal took the receiver from Dale and called up Elbert. 'I've got a bird here I would like you to make sing, sheriff. Better come over right away. I'm at the Seven Up and Down. There has been shooting, and likely there will be more. Black's gang is all set for war. They're helling around outside, and we are in the house.'
'How many of them?'
'Five. Casey and Miss Lovell and I are holding the fort.'
'Anybody been hurt yet?'
'I was attacked in the hills and had to shoot one to get away.' Hal listened to Elbert explode, and after a moment interrupted. 'Save it till we meet, sheriff. I was in a jam and—' He broke off in the middle of the sentence.
To Dale he said, 'The phone has gone dead. They must have cut the wire.'
'You… killed another of them?' she asked, her low voice almost a whisper.
'Yes. Forget that now.' He spoke curtly. 'Go down into the cellar with Susie till this is over.'
She was shocked at his brusque dismissal of what he had done, and she resented his sharp order to go packing until the danger was past. This was her house. He could not push her out of the picture. Even though he seemed not to appreciate it, she had just saved his life.
Stiffly, she told him, 'I'm going to stay here, sir. If you wish to go into the cellar, you may do so.'
He stared at her, a little surprised at her anger, but there was no time to make explanations now. His smile was ironic. 'I'm running true to form, according to Brick Fenwick — always hiding behind a woman's skirts.' Abruptly he brushed non-essentials aside. 'Is there another rifle in the house?'
'Yes. I'll get it.'
'Fellow headed this way waving a white flag.' Casey added to his bulletin. 'It's that young Fenwick.'
Dale and Hal moved to different windows. Fenwick had a white handkerchief in his hand, but he was not making much of it. He came forward confidently, with the lithe catlike tread that distinguished him.
Hal flung open the door and stood in the entrance. Fenwick stopped at the foot of the porch steps.
'Let him come in,' Dale said to Stevens, a command in her voice.
The M K man stepped back into the room and the outlaw followed him. Casey kept an eye on the companions of the envoy and Hal watched Fenwick closely. This might be a trick with an unpleasant surprise back of it.
'What do you want?' demanded Dale.
The boy's slitted eyes shifted from the young woman to Stevens. 'I want him — and Mullins.'
The bound man made haste to get in his explanation. 'He got the drop on me, Brick. I couldn't do a thing but go with him. I told him you'd fix him.'
Nobody paid the slightest attention to him.
Dale said to Fenwick, 'You can't have Mr. Stevens.' She turned to Hal. 'I don't suppose he can have this man Mullins either, can he?'
'No, I had too much trouble getting him here.' Hal had some misinformation he wanted to pass on to the enemy. 'Soon as I can get the sheriff, I want him to come over and collect Mullins. That will have to wait, since the telephone wires have been cut.'
Mullins started to correct this statement, but as he opened his mouth Hal, apparently by inadvertence, put his heel on the man's hand and ground it into the floor. The prisoner forgot what he had been going to say and let out a yell of pain instead.
'Sorry,' Hal apologized.
'I'm not asking you to turn over this gunman Stevens to me, Miss Lovell,' the outlaw said, a cold fierce eagerness shining in his eyes. 'I'm telling you we mean to take him. He went up into the hills and last night murdered another of our boys. He has run his string out. If it's the last thing I do in this world, I'll blast the life out of him. You have been running around butting into what's none of yore business. Keep out of this, ma'am. Let him play his own hand. Keep plugging at us with guns, and you'll end on a slab.'
'Now we understand one another, there's no reason for you to stay any longer, Fenwick,' Hal said, steel in his voice. 'Offer declined. Get out.'
The outlaw's furious eyes were a barometer of his rage. A dull flush suffused his face, and the thin cruel line
