Santry, glancing toward him, chuckled again, but without mirth. "The boy's woke up at last," he muttered to himself. "They've drove him to it, durn 'em. I knew almighty well that this law an' order stunt couldn't last forever. Wow!"

The latter exclamation was caused by a bullet which ricocheted from a rock near his head, driving a quant.i.ty of fine particles into his face.

"Whoop-e-e-e-e!" he howled a moment later. "We got 'em goin'. It's a cinch they can't stand this pace for more'n a week."

Indeed, it was a marvel that the defenders kept on fighting as long as they did. Already the door, beneath Wade's machine-like shooting, had been completely riddled; the windows were almost bare of gla.s.s; and great splinters of wood had been torn from the log walls by the heavy rifle bullets on their way through to the interior. Soon the door sagged and crashed inward, and into the gaping hole thus made Wade continued to empty his rifle.

At last, the fire of those within slackened and temporarily ceased. Did this mean surrender? Wade asked himself and ordered his men to stop shooting and await developments. For some moments all was still, and the advisability of rushing the house was being discussed when all at once the fire of the defenders began again. This time, however, there was something very odd about it. There was a loud banging of exploding cartridges, but only a few shots whistled around the heads of the cattlemen. Nevertheless, Wade told his men to resume shooting, and once more settled down to his own task.

"What'n h.e.l.l they tryin' to do?" Santry demanded. "Sounds like a Fourth o' July barbecue to me."

"I don't know," Wade answered, charging the magazine of his rifle, "but whatever it is they'll have to stop mighty soon."

Then gradually, but none the less certainly, the fire from within slackened until all was still. This seemed more like a visitation of death, and again Wade ordered his men to stop shooting. They obeyed orders and lay still, keenly watching the house.

"Do you surrender?" Wade shouted; but there was no reply.

Santry sprang to his feet.

"By the great horned toad!" he cried. "I'm a-goin' in there! Anybody that wants to come along is welcome."

Not a man in the party would be dared in that way, so, taking advantage of such cover as offered, they advanced upon the cabin, stealthily at first and then more rapidly, as they met with no resistance--no sign whatever of life. A final rush carried them through the doorway into the house, where they expected to find a shambles.

Wade struck a light, and faced about with a start as a low groan came from a corner of the back room. A man lay at full length on the floor, tied hand and foot, and gagged. It was Ed Nelson, one of the Double Arrow hands who had been surprised and captured by the posse, and a little farther away in the shadow against the wall his two companions lay in a like condition. With his knife Wade was cutting them loose, and glancing about in a puzzled search for the wounded men he expected to find in the house, when Santry shouted something from the kitchen.

"What is it, Bill?" the ranch owner demanded.

Santry tramped back into the room, laughing in a shamefaced sort of way.

"They done us, Gordon!" he burst out. "By the great horned toad, they done us! They chucked a bunch of sh.e.l.ls into the hot cook-stove, an'

sneaked out the side door while we was shootin' into the front room. By cracky, that beats...."

"That's what they did," spoke up Nelson, as well as his cramped tongue would permit, being now freed of the gag. "They gagged us first, so's we couldn't sing out; then they filled up the stove an' beat it."

What had promised to be a tragedy had proved a fiasco, and Wade smiled a little foolishly.

"The joke's on us, I guess, boys," he admitted. "But we've got the ranch back, at any rate. How are you feeling, Ed, pretty stiff and sore?"

"My Gawd, yes--awful!"

"Me, too," declared Tom Parrish, the second of the victims; and the third man swore roundly that he would not regain the full use of his legs before Christmas.

"Well, you're lucky at that," was Santry's dry comment. "All that saved you from gettin' shot up some in the fight was layin' low down in that corner where you was." He let his eyes travel around the littered, blood-spattered room. "From the looks o' this shebang we musta stung some of 'em pretty deep; but n.o.body was killed, I reckon. I hope Moran was the worst hurt, durn him!"

"He'll keep," Wade said grimly. "We've not done with him yet, Bill.

We've only just begun."

CHAPTER X

THE SENATOR GETS BUSY

It was daylight when the routed posse, with Race Moran in the lead, his left arm tied up in a blood-stained handkerchief, rode into Crawling Water. A bullet had pierced the fleshy part of the agent's wrist, a trifling wound, but one which gave him more pain than he might have suffered from a serious injury. None of the members of the posse had been dangerously wounded; indeed, they had suffered more in the spirit than in the flesh; but there had been a number of minor casualties amongst the men, which made a sufficiently b.l.o.o.d.y display to arouse the little town to active curiosity.

Under instructions from the leader, however, the fugitives kept grouchily silent, so that curiosity was able to feed only on speculations as to Wade's temper, and the fact that he had brought about Santry's release from jail. The story of that achievement had been bruited about Crawling Water since midnight, together with the probability that the Law would be invoked to punish the ranchman for his defiance of it. Popular sentiment was running high over the likelihood of such a step being taken, and the members of the posse were the targets of many hostile glances from the townspeople. At least two-thirds of the citizens were strongly in favor of Wade, but before they took active steps in his behalf they waited for the return of a horseman, who had hurried out to the ranch to learn at first hand exactly what had happened there.

Meanwhile Moran, in an ugly mood, had awakened the Senator from the troubled sleep which had come to him after much wakeful tossing.

Rexhill, with tousled hair, wrapped in a bathrobe, from the bottom of which his bare ankles and slippered feet protruded, sat on the edge of his bed, impatiently chewing an unlighted cigar while he listened to Moran's account of the fracas.

"You went too far, Race,--you went too far," he burst out angrily at last. "You had no orders to jump the ranch. I told you...."

"We've been fooling around long enough, Senator," Moran interrupted sullenly, nursing his throbbing wrist. "It was high time somebody started something, and when I saw my chance I seized it. You seem to think"--his voice trailed into scorn--"that we are playing marbles with boys, but, I tell you, it's men we're up against. My experience has shown me that it's the first blow that counts in any fight."

"Well, who got in the hardest lick, eh?" Rexhill snorted sarcastically.

"The first blow's all right, provided the second isn't a knockout from the other side. Why, confound it, Race, here we had Wade at our mercy.

He'd broken into jail and set free a suspected murderer--a clear case of criminality. Then you had to spoil it all."

Moran smothered an imprecation.

"You seem to forget, Senator, that we had him at our mercy before, and you wouldn't hear of it. If you'd taken my advice in the first place, we'd have had Wade in jail instead of Santry and things might have been different."

"Your advice was worthless under the circ.u.mstances; that's why I didn't take it." Rexhill deliberately paused and lighted his cigar, from which he took several soothing puffs. To have been aroused from his bed with such news had fl.u.s.tered him somewhat; but he had never known anything worth while to come out of a heated discussion, and he sought now to calm himself. Finally, he spoke slowly. "What you proposed to me then was a frame-up, and all frame-ups are dangerous, particularly when they have little to rest upon. For that reason I refused to fall in with your ideas, Race. This release of Santry from jail is--or was--an entirely different thing, an overt criminal act, with Sheriff Thomas on our side as an unimpeachable witness."

Moran was suffering too keenly from his wound and smarting under his defeat too much to be altogether reasonable. His manner was fast losing the appearance of respect which he had previously shown his employer.

His expression was becoming heated and contemptuous.

"You didn't base your refusal on logic at the time, Senator," he said.

"It was sentiment, if I remember right. Wade had broken bread with you, and all that. I don't see but what that applies just as well now as it did then."

"It doesn't," the Senator argued smugly, still rankling from Wade's arraignment of him the day before, "because even hospitality has its limits of obligation. So long as I knew Wade to be innocent, I did not care to have him arrested; but I don't admit any sentiment of hospitality which compels me to save a _known_ criminal from the hand of justice. Sheriff Thomas came in to see me last night and I agreed with him that Wade should be brought to account for his contempt of the law.

Wade forced his way into the jail and released his foreman at the point of a gun. Even so, I feel sorry for Wade and I am a little apprehensive of the consequences that will probably develop from his foolhardiness."

"Well, by G.o.d, if there's any sympathy for him floating around this room, it all belongs to you, Senator." Moran tenderly fingered his aching wrist. "I'm not one of these 'turn the other cheek' guys; you can gamble on that!"

"But now where are we?" Rexhill ignored the other's remarks entirely.

"We are but little better off than Wade is. He pulled Santry out of jail, and we tried to steal his ranch. The only difference is that so far he has succeeded, and we have failed. He has as much law on his side now as we have on ours."

Moran's head drooped a little before the force of this argument, although he was chiefly impressed by the fact that he had failed. His failures had been few, because Fortune had smiled upon him in the past; and doubtless for this reason he was the less able to treat failure philosophically. His plans at the ranch house had gone awry. He had counted on meeting Wade there in the daytime, in the open, and upon provoking him, before witnesses, into some hot-headed act which would justify a battle. The surprise attack had left the agent without this excuse for the hostilities which had occurred.

Rexhill arose and walked up and down the room in thought, his slippered feet shuffling over the floor, showing now and then a glimpse of his fat, hairy legs as the skirt of his bathrobe fluttered about. A cloud of fragrant smoke from his cigar trailed him as he walked, and from the way he chewed on the tobacco his _confreres_ in the Senate could have guessed that he was leading up to one of his Czar-like p.r.o.nouncements.

Presently he stopped moving and twisted the cigar in his mouth so that its fumes would be out of his eyes, as his glance focused on Moran.

"There's just one way out of this mess, Race," he began. "Now heed what I say to you. I'm going to send a telegram to the Department of the Interior which will bring a troop of cavalry down here from Fort Mackenzie. You must go slow from now on, and let the authorities settle the whole matter."

The agent sat up alertly, as his employer, wagging a ponderous forefinger impressively, proceeded.