Pauline had time to cry out only once before she felt herself gripped by powerful hands and dragged from the wagon seat, where Hal Haines sat shaking with laughter. He stood up and started to draw his revolver slowly. From behind him a lasso was thrown lightly and the noose tightened around his arms.
He kept on laughing, although he was a little afraid the boys were overdoing matters. He knew his wife would never forgive him for this actual kidnapping of Pauline—he certainly had never intended it.
And she was really frightened. He could tell that by her cries as she was thrust across the pommel of the masked leader's horse and the horse was spurred to a tearing gallop down the road.
Haines tried to shout a command and call the joke off, but the riders had all followed after their leader, and he was alone in the buckboard.
"They needn't have been so realistic with their knots," he said, as he struggled to free himself from the rope.
It was ten minutes before he wriggled free. He picked up the lines and drove on toward the ranch—a little nervous now over the receptions he would get, but still laughing.
At the fork where the road to the mountains left the main highway, Haines flashed out his revolver in real excitement. Another group of five masked men had driven their horses out of a clump of small trees. They fired their revolvers as they surrounded the buckboard. Then suddenly discovering that there was no woman passenger, they tore off their masks and came up with quick, eager inquiries.
Perhaps for the first time in his life Hal Haines knew what fear was— not fear for himself, but for another.
"Boys, there was another party on the road. They took her. I took 'em for you," he said in a stifled voice. "Come on. Cabot, give me your horse; take the rig back and tell Mrs. Haines."
He sprang into the saddle, and, filling their revolvers as they rode, the band of jesters, who had suddenly turned so grimly serious, dashed back toward town.