Val turned to watch the outlaws while Gale took a look out the window. There were men in the distance, but they were indistinguishable in the gray light of dawn and because of the thickness of the trees. While she watched, they started forward toward the cabin. She raised her rifle and fired a bullet that raised a spurt of dust in front of the advancing horses. That had the desired effect. The men retreated to the trees again. There they seemed to spread out fanlike.
“Going to surround the place,” she said to Val. “We’re trapped all right. We might as well invite them in now.”
“We won’t give up without a fight,” Val said staunchly.
At the moment she spoke a well-planted bullet shook the center panel of the door. The girls exchanged looks.
“I don’t think it will be much of a fight,” Gale said. “We have only one rifle bullet left. That won’t be much help.”
“I’d like to know who it is,” Valerie said with a frown. “If it is these fellows’ friends why did they stop before they got to the cabin in the first place?”
Another bullet thudded into the door. The outlaws looked about uneasily.
“Why don’t you go out and meet your friends,” one of them demanded of Gale.
She regarded him with a shrewd glance. “Our friends?” she murmured. “Are you sure you weren’t expecting anybody?”
“Shore, the King of England,” the other man drawled loftily.