and, finding the place surrounded, climbed to the flat roof of the shack. As soon as the coast was comparatively clear he had dropped on one of the guards, knocked him senseless with his gun-butt, and re-entered the building.
'Good work. Black Feather heap big chief,' Pete commented. 'What do we do now, Jim?'
'Go out the way he come in, get out hosses, an' head for the Box B,' the marshal decided.
According to the redskin, there were only four guards. The one on the kitchen side had already been disposed of; the man at the back was their danger. The marshal devised a plan. Cautioning the others to await his signal, he climbed out and helped himself to the revolver off the still form lying in the shadow of the wall. Then he walked towards the rear of the building. In a few moments a man appeared dimly in the gloom, approaching him.
'All quiet, yore side?' the stranger queried.
The voice told the marshal who it was. 'Shore, Parson,' he mumbled. 'There's on'y one thing--'
'What's that?' asked the other, and came closer.
The moment he was near enough the marshal leapt, his fingers closing round the man's throat and choking the cry of alarm before it was born. The steady, strangling pressure soon reduced the victim to helplessness and a tap from the marshal's pistol-barrel tumbled him, a limp heap, to the ground. His sombrero deadened both, the noise and force of the blow, but Pardoe would be harmless for some time. Having ascertained this, and collected the fallen man's belt, which to his great content he found to be his own, the marshal gave the signal. Silently they stole to the Red Ace corral, secured their horses, and started for the Box B. When they were safely on their way Pete emitted a chuckle.
'I'm bettin' that Raven person will be a good one to steer clear of to-day,' he opined.
In the pale light of the dawn Green looked at the little man and laughed. 'Sorry you feel like that, Tubby,' he said. 'We're goin' to see him.' Then, noting the other's bewilderment, he added, 'Did yu allow I'd run away?'
'Huh!' Pete snorted. 'I claim to be as plucky as the next fella, but I'd run from a rope every time. Dancin' on nothin' never did strike me as humorsome.'
'Mebbe Raven'll reconsider them projects if we go back with the Box B an' Double S outfits behind us,' Green suggested.
'Make a difference, o' course,' Pete admitted. 'But there's a jag o' men in that town.'
'Some of 'em friends of ourn,' the marshal reminded.
The deputy subsided, but he was not satisfied; it seemed to him nothing short of madness to go back to Lawless, and when they reached the Box B he again protested, only to find Andy on the marshal's side.
'Shore we'll go with yu,' the rancher cried. 'That bird is flyin' too high an' it's time his pin-feathers was trimmed. Hey, Rusty, round up some o' the boys, an' tell 'em to come loaded for trouble.'
During breakfast Andy got the whole story of the previous day's happenings, and his face grew stormy when he heard of the hold Raven claimed to have on the Double S.
'Throw Tonia out, will he, the dirty hound? Not while I can pull a trigger,' he growled. 'I'm obliged to yu again, marshal, but I wish yu'd broken his damned neck.'
Accompanied by Rusty and half a dozen well-armed riders, they made for the Double S, and since they wasted no time on the trip, they arrived before the men had dispersed to their different duties. Tonia met them at the door with a look of relief which her first words explained.
'When I saw you in the distance I thought it was that man coming to turn us out,' she said.
'We're goin' to turn him out, or, anyways, show him where he gets off,' Andy told her grimly, and related what had happened to the marshal. 'We thought Renton an' some o' yore boys might like to come along.'
'Yu bet they will, an' I'll make another,' bellowed Reuben Sarel from the veranda, adding, to a passing cowboy, 'Yu, Lafe, push them broncs in the buckboard an' send Renton here.'
The foreman made no comment when he heard the story, but his lips clamped in a hard line as he turned away, and when he reappeared six riders followed him.
'Gotta leave the rest to look after things an' Miss Tonia,' he explained.
'You needn't worry about Miss Tonia--she's going too,' his mistress announced calmly, and shook a pretty but obstinate head to all their protests. 'It is partly on my account that you are going,' she pointed out. 'Some of you may get hurt and then I'll be of use.'
She was looking at Andy as she spoke, and that settled the matter so far as he was concerned. The marshal clinched it by deciding that she would be as safe with them as anywhere else.
They set out at once, the buckboard leading, with Green beside it, followed by Andy and Tonia, with the rest of the party strung out behind. The cowboys had not the whole of the story, but they knew that Raven was trying to get their respective ranches, and that was enough; whether he had any claim to them was beside the question; they were loyal to their owners, and they did not like the saloon-keeper. Therefore they rode gaily on an errand which might mean death for any one of them, but beneath their banter was a note of stern purpose.
'Reckon we'll put a light to the Red Ace an' chase that bastard redskin back to his wigwam,' Rusty remarked.
'Shucks! Ain't there no trees in Lawless?' drawled a Double S man, whose deliberation in speech and movement had long ago earned him a nickname.
'Good for yu, Lightnin',' approved another. 'I dunno what the marshal aims to do, but I'm with him, all the way.'
Truth to tell, the marshal did not know himself, and confessed as much when Sarel put the question.
'I'm guessin' that arrestin' Pete an' me last night was just a bluff, an' I'm goin' to call it,' he said. 'It'll be a showdown, an' I ain't ready, but he's forced my hand.'
'Seth's crookeder than a cow's hindleg,' Sarel observed. 'He's had me by the short hair a long time past, but now I ain't carin' providin' Tonia don't suffer.'
The marshal nodded. He had a fairly accurate idea of what the other was referring to, and he looked at him with a newborn respect. There was something of his more virile brother in the fat man after all.
CHAPTER XXV
They arrived at Lawless to find the street empty save for a few loafers outside the Red Ace. One of these dived headlong into the saloon at the sight of them.
Andy, the girl, and Green rode on to Durley's and met the proprietor of the Rest House at the door. His eyebrows rose at the sight of them.
'The old girl'll be pleased to death to see yu, miss,' he said to Tonia, and when she had gone into the house, 'Ain't tired o' life, are you, marshal?'
'Not that yu'd notice,' the officer replied carelessly. 'Why?'
Durley spat in disgust. 'Yu must be--to come back,' he retorted. 'Raven's as mad as a teased tarantula, an' he's turned most o' the town agin yu. Claims to have got the goods on yu for fair, though I dunno how. There's a meetin' at the Red Ace right now to elect that runt Pardoe as marshal, and show yu up.'
'We ain't been invited, but I think we oughta attend, Andy,' the marshal said gravely, but the little crinkles at the corners of his eyes were well in evidence. 'Our friends will shore expect it.'
'Yu won't meet many there. Raven's got the riff-raff o' the place; the decent men are stayin' away,' Durley told him.
'I'm takin' friends with me,' the marshal said, nodding to the waiting group of riders. 'Round up some o' them decent men an' fetch 'em along, ol'-timer.'
Durley hurried off as Tonia reappeared for a last word with her lover.
'You'll be careful, Andy, won't you?' she whispered. 'Remember that you belong to me now.'
'That's somethin' I ain't never goin' to forget, honey,' the young man said. 'Don't yu worry.'
At which masculine comfort she smiled bravely and went in to do just what he had told her not to do, as a woman will.
The loungers outside the Red Ace watched curiously as the marshal and his followers tied their mounts and entered. The bar was deserted save for its custodian; with a sour sneer he watched them file through the opening into the other room.
Between forty and fifty men were congregated in the dance-hall, lounging on the benches which lined the walls, and the marshal saw at a glance that the better element in the town was not represented. Freighters, prospectors, gamblers, owners or workers in smaller saloons, with a sprinkling of Mexicans, most of them had little to lose and would be ready for anything which promised excitement and possible gain. There were several he failed
