LITMIR.BIZ

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      As Steve strolled out into the moonlight, he left behind him the monotonous thumping of heavy feet and the singsong voice of the caller.

      “Birdie fly out,

       Crow hop in,

       Join all hands

       And circle ag’in.”

      came to him, in the high, strident voice of Lute Perkins. He took a deep breath of fresh, clean air, and looked about him. After the hot, dusty room, the grove, with its green foliage, through which the moonlight filtered, looked invitingly cool. He sauntered forward, climbed the hill up which the wooded patch straggled, and sat down, with his back to a pine.

      Behind the valley rampart, he could see the dim, saw-toothed Teton peaks, looking like ghostly shapes in the moonlight. The night was peaceful. Faint and mellow came the sound of jovial romping from the house; otherwise, beneath the distant stars, a perfect stillness held.

      How long he sat there, letting thoughts happen dreamily rather than producing them of gray matter, he did not know. A slight sound, the snapping of a twig, brought his mind to alertness without causing the slightest movement of his body.

      His first thought was that, in accordance with dance etiquette in the ranch country, his revolver was in its holster under the seat of the trap in which they had driven over. Since his week was not up, he had expected no attack from Jed and his friends. As for the enemy, of whom Arlie had advised him, surely a public dance was the last place to tempt one who apparently preferred to attack from cover. But his instinct was certain. He did not need to look round to know he was trapped.

      “I’m unarmed. You’d better come round and shoot me from in front. It will look better at the inquest,” he said quietly.

      “Don’t move. You’re surrounded,” a voice answered.

      A rope snaked forward and descended over the ranger’s head, to be jerked tight, with a suddenness that sent a pain like a knife thrust through the wounded shoulder. The instinct for self-preservation was already at work in him. He fought his left arm free from the rope that pressed it to his side, and dived toward the figure at the end of the rope. Even as he plunged, he found time to be surprised that no revolver shot echoed through the night, and to know that the reason was because his enemies preferred to do their work in silence.

      The man upon whom he leaped gave a startled oath and stumbled backward over a root.

      Fraser, his hand already upon the man’s throat, went down too. Upon him charged men from all directions. In the shadows, they must have hampered each other, for the ranger, despite his wound—his shoulder was screaming with pain—got to his knees, and slowly from his knees to his feet, shaking the clinging bodies from him.

      Wrenching his other hand from under the rope, he fought them back as a hurt grizzly does the wolf pack gathered for the kill. None but a very powerful man could ever have reached his feet. None less agile and sinewy than a panther could have beaten them back as at first he did. They fought in grim silence, yet the grove was full of the sounds of battle. The heavy breathing, the beat of shifting feet, the soft impact of flesh striking flesh, the thud of falling bodies—of these the air was vocal. Yet, save for the gasps of sudden pain, no man broke silence save once.

      “The snake’ll get away yet!” a hoarse voice cried, not loudly, but with an emphasis that indicated strong conviction.

      Impossible as it seemed, the ranger might have done it but for an accident. In the struggle, the rope had slipped to a point just below his knees. Fighting his way down the hill, foot by foot, the Texan felt the rope tighten. One of his attackers flung himself against his chest and he was tripped. The pack was on him again. Here there was more light, and though for a time the mass swayed back and forth, at last they hammered him down by main strength. He was bound hand and foot, and dragged back to the grove.

      They faced their victim, panting deeply from their exertions. Fraser looked round upon the circle of distorted faces, and stopped at one. Seen now, with the fury and malignancy of its triumph painted upon it, the face was one to bring bad dreams.

      The lieutenant, his chest still laboring heavily, racked with the torture of his torn shoulder, looked into that face out of the only calm eyes in the group.

      “So it’s you, Struve?”

      “Yes, it’s me—me and my friends.”

      “I’ve been looking for you high and low.”

      “Well, you’ve found me,” came the immediate exultant answer.

      “I reckon I’m indebted to you for this.” Fraser moved his shoulder slightly.

      “You’ll owe me a heap more than that before the night’s over.”

      “Your intentions were good then, I expect. Being shy a trigger finger spoils a man’s aim.”

      “Not always.”

      “Didn’t like to risk another shot from Bald Knob, eh? Must be some discouraging to hit only once out of three times at three hundred yards, and a scratch at that.”

      The convict swore. “I’ll not miss this time, Mr. Lieutenant.”

      “You’d better not, or I’ll take you back to the penitentiary where I put you before.”

      “You’ll never put another man there, you meddling spy,” Struve cried furiously.

      “I’m not so sure of that. I know what you’ve got against me, but I should like to know what kick your friends have coming,” the ranger retorted.

      “You may have mine, right off the reel, Mr. Fraser, or whatever you call yourself. You came into this valley with a lie on your lips. We played you for a friend, and you played us for suckers. All the time you was in a deal with the sheriff for you know what. I hate a spy like I do a rattlesnake.”

      It was the man Yorky that spoke. Steve’s eyes met his.

      “So I’m a spy, am I?”

      “You know best.”

      “Anyhow, you’re going to shoot me first, and find out afterward?”

      “Wrong guess. We’re going to hang you.” Struve, unable to keep back longer his bitter spleen, hissed this at him.

      “Yes, that’s about your size, Struve. You can crow loud now, when the odds are six to one, with the one unarmed and tied at that. But what I want to know is—are you playing fair with your friends? Have you told them that every man in to-night’s business will hang, sure as fate? Have you told them of those cowardly murders you did in Arizona and Texas? Have you told them that your life is forfeit, anyway? Do they know you’re trying to drag them into your troubles? No? You didn’t tell them that. I’m surprised at you, Struve.”

      “My name’s Johnson.”

      “Not in Arizona, it isn’t. Wolf Struve it is there, wanted for murder and other sundries.” He turned swiftly from him to his confederates. “You fools, you’re putting your heads into a noose. He’s in already, and wants you in, too. Test him. Throw the end of that rope over the limb, and stand back, while he pulls me up alone. He daren’t—not for his life, he daren’t. He knows that whoever pulls on that rope hangs himself as surely as he hangs me.”

      The men looked at each other, and at Struve. Were they being led into trouble to pay this man’s scores off for him? Suspicion stirred uneasily in them.

      “That’s right, too. Let Johnson pull him up,” Slim Leroy said sullenly.

      “Sure. You’ve got more at stake than we have. It’s up to you, Johnson,” Yorky agreed.

      “That’s right,” a third chipped in.

      “We’ll all pull together, boys,” Struve insinuated. “It’s only a bluff of his. Don’t let him scare you off.”

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