They were Lee Sweet and four of his cowhands; and they stopped their horses on a shelf that overlooked the cabins of the Mundys and Joshua Cole, and sat looking down the mountain’s side.
Then one of them dismounted. There was no mistaking the gigantic body, the half-moon of ropelike whiskers, the black Columbia-shape Stetson, or the green-and-purple plaid of the flannel shirt. Lee Sweet stood by his horse’s side a moment or two, apparently talking, and then a rifle, butt up, crept above the horse’s neck as Sweet pulled it from its scabbard.
“Let’s try to hide,” said Joshua calmly. “We’re about to learn something, I think.”
There was no cover close. Indeed, it seemed remarkable that the horsemen above had not seen Madge and Joshua, but apparently they had not. The two swung about and sought the obscurity of a clump of yuccas perhaps a hundred feet away, but before they reached it they heard the bark of a rifle, and the echoes went galloping off on the other side of Spyglass Mountain.
They looked back. Lee Sweet was sitting flat on the ground, his left elbow resting on his knee, the rifle aimed down the mountainside. Then the two rounded the yucca clump and left their saddles, to steal back through the trees and watch. And as they looked out Sweet’s rifle spoke again.
The vaqueros who accompanied him had moved their ponies farther back from the shelf, leading their employer’s animal. Only Sweet remained, and now Joshua and Madge saw that a scant screen of sagebrush probably hid him from any one who might be below. Again there came a thin puff of smoke, and a third bullet went whistling to the lowlands.
Shanty Madge’s face was white, but she had said nothing since the discovery of the cowmen. Cole of Spyglass Mountain leaned against the rough trunk of a yucca, his neck craned around it. Madge saw the spasmodic inflation and deflation of his thin Grecian nostrils, and his gray-blue eyes were intense. But in them was no sign of fear or hatred. His thin, long-fingered hand against the yucca palm was as steady as if it were caressing the tube of the telescope on Spyglass Mountain. And the wraith of a smile, tolerant, whimsical, had settled upon his lips.
“Sweet knows,” he at last observed in his ordinary tones, “that the chances are fifty to one I’m not in my cabin. He can see that Argo is not on his picket rope down by the lake. He also must have noted that your horse is gone. He knows we ride together a lot. He’s just putting a few bullet holes through my cabin roof to warn me, I imagine. What a big, overgrown, innocent child he is! I wonder if he’s drunk—California Bill says he’s mild as a rabbit when he’s sober.”
“But suppose you were in your cabin,” said Madge, her tones rather tense. “That would be a little serious, wouldn’t it?”
“Well, if he hit me it would be.”