Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/186

 dinner, when his attention was arrested by two horsemen approaching from the direction of the ranch.

There seemed to be something familiar in the pose of one of them. Barrett went on past the house, stopping near the wire fence at the roadside to wait the rise of the riders out of a little swale, thinking it might be some of the boys of the Diamond Tail whom he would not want to let pass without a friendly hail.

At the first sight of the riders as they came up out of the hollow, Barrett's heart fluttered and seemed to drop. Dale Findlay was the rider whose carriage seemed familiar, fixed but transitorily in his memory from the day he had seen the superintendent ride into Eagle Rock camp.

Barrett was unarmed; his revolver hung in the house, a hundred feet or more behind him, where he had left it that morning before going to work. It had seemed such an unfitting implement to drag around in the peaceful occupation of hay-making. Besides, the weight of it was considerable around the body of a sweating man.

Too late now he realized his over-confidence in his situation and pursuit. Dale Findlay, not a hundred yards away, had his gun out, carrying it raised high to throw down for a shot that he should not mean to cripple.

Barrett made a dash for the load of hay a few rods to the right of where he stood, hoping desperately to make that shelter before Findlay could throw a telling shot. As he ran he heard the crack of their guns, but he made it to the wagon untouched. There he waited