Of the Thunder Ridge men there were only Darby, Aleck Gault, and Steve Knight left, and two or three of the station men kept them company.
Dan managed to detach two of these on different excuses and get them under lock and key, and the others were invited by the publican to come and have a game of cards in a back room. Two or three of the townsmen went with them, and they settled down to a rather noisy game of euchre.
“Where are all the others gone?” said Steve, suddenly, looking round. “Seen any of them, Darby?” Darby shook his head and looked round. “Room’s full,” he said. “Must be all here.” He tried to count, but gave it up, as even the figures in the chairs kept moving and had a puzzling way of multiplying themselves.
Dan went out to the bar, where the remaining few of the station hands were drinking with men of the town—hangers-on who, Dan knew, would keep them quietly there as long as they would pay for the drinks. Darby the Bull came out and went up to Trooper Dan. “D’you think them others have got into trouble wi’ the polis?” he said confidentially.
“Shouldn’t wonder if they might,” said Dan, gravely. “S’pose we just walk quietly up to the police station and ask about them.”
Darby agreed, and they went off together.
Ten minutes after, Steve and the others heard a pandemonium of noise break out up the street. They hurried out, and met a wild crowd whooping and cheering and laughing, stamping down the street, and giving vent to long-drawn chorus-yells “Coolongolong-go-long-long-beer.”
They swarmed into the bar and shouted again for beer, and called for three cheers for Darby the Bull. Darby had slouched in at the rear of the throng, blood trickling from a cut lip, and one eye slowly closing in a purple swelling.
“What is it—where have you been?” shouted Steve, through the uproar. He got the tale by degrees. All the men were there—Never-Never and Whip Thompson, Dolly Grey, Cocky Smith, Blazes, and everyone of the others. Darby the Bull had gone unsuspectingly with Trooper Dan to the station, and Dan had opened a cell door to show him a Thunder Ridge man who’d been locked up. But from there the Trooper’s plans had miscarried. His push had not sent Darby right in, and the rest of the prisoners woke to the sound of a murderous scuffling and stamping and shouting, and, after this had been brought to a full stop by a door-slam that shook the building, their doors were unlocked and—here they were.
“I let ’em out,” said Darby, simply, in answer to Steve’s questions. “They’d got inter trouble wi’ the polis—so I got ’em out. That’s all right, isn’t it?”