Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/308

 Barrett took the animal and started away with it, leading it by the bridle, his intention unknown and unguessed by the rustler and Fred Grubb, who followed into the road.

"Stop!" Fred ordered his prisoner when they stood in the middle of the highway.

Findlay obeyed, turning around slowly, with what indifference he could assume, to look sharply at the man who held him under his gun. There was a glitter in Findlay's dark eyes, a calculative desperation in his thin face, as he marked the distance growing between his captors.

Barrett led the horse across the road, out fifty yards or more into the open range, where he dropped the reins to the ground. He hung Findlay's double holster to the saddle horn, put one of the rustler's guns in it, and turned to leave, carrying Findlay's other pistol in his hand. His action said as plainly as words: "If you can do it, you're free to mount and ride."

Findlay was standing in the middle of the road, looking keenly in the direction of the hay-ranch. Suddenly he lifted his hand and exclaimed:

"Here they come!"

Fred Grubb jumped, turned his head quickly, like a horse startled from its grazing. Findlay seized the gun-barrel as Fred gatheredhis surprised wits and cut loose with both charges. The buckshot spent their force impotently upon the air, and the next moment Findlay, lithe and strong as a panther, wrenched the gun out of the wrangler's hands.

"Give me the shells!' he demanded, menacing Fred's