Page:Cherokee Trails (1928).pdf/187

 tight as fiddle strings, all set for a fight or a break for the hole in the wall. It was not the time for attempting to cut out the Block E horses and heading them back to Kansas. His daylight business was to locate them, which he had done. Night must bring the solution or the failure of the problem ahead of him, if luck held for him and that horse wrangler didn't come in there, discover him and bring the whole thing to a premature break.

The fellow was banging around at the end of the stable as if hanging his saddle in the shed. There was no talking going on; Simpson concluded that he must be alone. Now the door in the corral end of the stable opened. Simpson dropped back against the manger, to avoid discovery in the sudden flood of light, gun out, all set for something to pop.

"Noahy! Dan! Noahy—Noahy!" the person at the door called. "You lunkheads up there goin' to sleep all day? Git out o' there, I tell you! Noahy, Noahy!"

Simpson, crouching so low he could neither see nor be seen, was more troubled than surprised to discover the horse wrangler to be a woman. It was a rough, jarring, unlovely voice, contemptuous and commanding, but unmistakably a woman's. It would be dev'lish awkward for a chap if she came prowling around and discovered him. Tom Simpson lacked any precedent in his varied experience for the manner of procedure in such a pinch.

She shouted again, repeating her formula except for a slight trimming of profanity, bumping the ladder against the hayloft to increase her awakening summons. Simpson could see the top of the ladder in the dark hole with hay spilling over its edges.