“I’m with you,” he said. “Who told you? And who done it?”
“Never mind who told me; but a siwash named Esteban was to pull the thing off for Grayson. Grayson wanted Miss Harding an’ he was goin’ to have her stolen for him.”
“The hound!” muttered Eddie.
The two men dashed up onto the veranda of the ranchhouse and pounded at the door until a Chinaman opened it and stuck out his head, inquiringly.
“Is Miss Harding here?” demanded Billy.
“Mlissy Hardie kleep,” snapped the servant. “Wally wanee here flo blekfas?,” and would have shut the door in their faces had not Billy intruded a heavy boot. The next instant he placed a large palm over the celestial’s face and pushed the man back into the house. Once inside he called Mr. Harding’s name aloud.
“What is it?” asked the gentleman a moment later as he appeared in a bedroom doorway off the living-room clad in his pajamas. “What’s the matter? Why, gad man, is that you? Is this really Billy Byrne?”
“Sure,” replied Byrne shortly; “but we can’t waste any time chinnin’. I heard that Miss Barbara was goin’ to be swiped last night—I heard that she had been. Now hurry and see if she is here.”
Anthony Harding turned and leaped up the narrow stairway to the second floor four steps at a time. He hadn’t gone upstairs in that fashion in forty years. Without even pausing to rap he burst into his daughter’s bedroom. It was empty. The bed was unruffled. It had not been slept in. With a moan the man turned back and ran hastily to the other rooms upon the second floor—Barbara was nowhere to be found. Then he hastened downstairs to the two men awaiting him.
As he entered the room from one end Grayson entered it from the other through the doorway leading out upon the veranda. Billy Byrne had heard footsteps upon the boards without and he was ready, so that as Grayson entered he found himself looking straight at the business end of a six-shooter. The foreman halted, and stood looking in surprise first at Billy Byrne, and then at Eddie Shorter and Mr. Harding.
“What does this mean?” he demanded, addressing Eddie. “What you doin’ here with your prisoner? Who told you to let him out, eh?”
“Can the chatter,” growled Billy Byrne. “Shorter didn’t let me out. I escaped hours ago, and I’ve just come back from José’s to ask you where Miss Harding is, you low-lived cur, you. Where is she?”
“What has Mr. Grayson to do with it?” asked Mr. Harding. “How should he know anything about it? It’s all a mystery to me—you here, of all men in the world, and Grayson talking about you as the prisoner. I can’t make it out. Quick, though, Byrne, tell me all you know about Barbara.”
Billy kept Grayson covered as he replied to the request of Harding.
“This guy hires a bunch of Pimans to steal Miss Barbara,” he said. “I got it straight from the fellow he paid the money to for gettin’ him the right men to pull off the job. He wants her it seems,” and Billy shot a look at the ranch foreman that would have killed if looks could. “She can’t have been gone long. I seen her after midnight, just before I made my getaway, so they can’t have taken her very far. This thing here can’t help us none neither, for he don’t know where she is any more’n we do. He thinks he does; but he don’t. The siwashes framed it on him, an’ they’ve doubled-crossed him. I got that straight too; but, Gawd! I don’t know where they’ve taken her or what they’re goin’ to do with her.”
As he spoke he turned his eyes for the first time away from Grayson and looked full in Anthony Harding’s face. The latter saw beneath the strong character lines of the other’s countenance the agony of fear and doubt that lay heavy upon his heart.
In the brief instant that Billy’s watchful gaze left the figure of the ranch foreman the latter saw the opportunity he craved. He was standing directly in the doorway—a single step would carry him out of range of Byrne’s gun, placing a wall between it and him, and Grayson was not slow in taking that step.
When Billy turned his eyes back the Texan had disappeared, and by the time the former reached the doorway Grayson was halfway to the office building on the veranda of which stood the four soldiers of Villa grumbling and muttering over the absence of their prisoner of the previous evening.
Billy Byrne stepped out into the open. The ranch foreman called aloud to the four Mexicans that their prisoner was at the ranchhouse and as they looked in that direction they saw him, revolver in hand, coming slowly toward them. There was a smile upon his lips which they could not see because of the distance, and which, not knowing Billy Byrne, they would not have interpreted correctly; but the revolver they did understand, and at sight of it one of them threw his carbine to his shoulder. His finger, however, never closed upon the trigger, for there came the sound of a shot from beyond Billy Byrne and the Mexican staggered forward, pitching over the edge of the porch to the ground.
Billy turned his head in the direction from which the shot had come and saw Eddie Shorter running toward him, a smoking six-shooter in his right hand.
“Go back,” commanded Byrne; “this is my funeral.”
“Not on your life,” replied Eddie Shorter. “Those greasers don’t take no white man off’n El Orobo, while I’m here. Get busy! They’re comin’.”
And sure enough they were coming, and as they came their carbines popped and the bullets whizzed about the heads of the two Americans. Grayson, too, had taken a hand upon the side of the Villistas. From the bunkhouse other men were running rapidly in the direction of the fight, attracted
