This order, however, was not the result of accident, but of calculation. The buckboard held Oscar and the elder McCrae. Also it contained a quantity of dynamite. Naturally, it was drawn, not by McCrae's eager road team, but by a pair of less ambition. And the riders, front and rear, were in the nature of pickets; for, though it was unlikely that any one would be met at that time of night, it was just as well to take no chances.
The riders in the lead were Casey Dunne and Tom McHale. Each had a rifle beneath his leg. In addition, McHale wore two old, ivory-handled Colts at his belt, and Dunne's single holster held a long automatic, almost powerful as a rifle. They rode slowly, seldom faster than a walk, peering ahead watchfully, their ears tuned to catch the slightest suspicious sound.
"This here is like old times," said McHale. "Durn me if I hadn't about forgotten the feel of a gun under my leg. I wish we could have our photos took now. We sure look plenty warlike."
"I don't want any photo," said Casey. "If I can get home without meeting any one, it will suit me down to the ground. I wish we hadn't brought these guns. It's safer every way."
"It's safer for some people," McHale commented. "S'pose we struck hard luck to-night and got backed into a corner or followed up too close—how'd we look without guns? 'Course, I'd take awful long chances before I shot at anybody; but all the same a Winchester helps out a retirin' disposition a whole lot."
"No doubt about that. But the devil of packing a gun is the temptation to use it before you really have to. That accounts for a lot of trouble. Why, even in the old days, a man who didn't pack a gun was safe, unless he tracked up with some mighty mean specimen of a killer. And those dirty killers usually didn't last long."
"That's so in one way," McHale admitted, "but I look at it different. If nobody but the killers had packed guns they'd have run the whole show. Some of them gents killed for the fun of it, like a mink in a chicken coop. The mean sort'd pick out some harmless, helpless party, and stomp up and down, r'arin' and cussin' till they got up a big mad. The chances was about even they'd shoot. Usual they didn't try them plays on men that wore their artillery in plain sight."
"Well, we haven't any killers now, anyway," said Dunne. "This is about as far as it's safe to go with the horses. We'll wait till the others come up."
In a few minutes, the faint straining of leather, creak of springs, and subdued clank of axles came to them. The buckboard loomed out of the darkness, and halted suddenly.
"That you, boys?" McCrae's voice asked.