"Shut up! Shut up!" yelled Gates, enraged in an instant "If you says that much more I'll bust yore fool neck! For G—d's sake, is that all you know, Andrew Jackson?"
"If it wasn't for you," said the man on the bench very deliberately as his hand closed over a piece of firewood, "I said, if—it—wasn't—for—you, we'd be ridin' with the boys tonight, instead of stayin' around these houses like three sick babies."
"Another bull's eye for Mr. Harrison," said the man inside.
Gates wheeled with an oath. "An' if it wasn't for you sound asleep in th' valley; an' Fleming sound asleep up on that butte, I wouldn't 'a' been lammed on th' head an' tied up like a sack! It's purty cussed tough when a man with nothin' worse than a scalp wound has to lay up this way!"
"Bull's eye for Mr. Gates," announced the man in the cabin, with great relish.
"If you'd been wide awake yoreself," retorted Harrison, "you wouldn't 'a' been tied up! You didn't even squawk when he hit you, so we'd know he was around. Was you tryin' to keep it a secret?" he demanded with withering sarcasm. "An' as for them bandages, how did I know th' dog had been sleepin' on 'em? Cookie gave 'em to me!"
"Bull's eye for Mr. Harrison," said Fleming. "But he was awake," he continued with vast conviction. "He was wide awake. He ain't got no more sense awake than he has asleep. When he's got his boots on, his brains are cramped an' suffocated."
"You got him figgered wrong," said Harrison. "His brains are only suffocated when he sets down."
While the little comedy was being enacted at the bunk-houses, the main body of rustlers followed Quigley down the steeply sloping bottom of a concealed crevice miles north of the ranch-house of the CL. The five men emerged quietly and paused on the edge of the curving Deepwater, and then slowly followed their leader into the icy stream. The current, weakened by a widening of the river at this point, still flowed with sufficient strength to make itself felt and the slowly moving horses leaned against it as they filed across the secret ford. Reaching the farther bank the second and third men rode quietly to right and left, rapidly becoming vague and then lost to sight. The three remaining riders sat quietly in their saddles for what, to them, seemed to be a long time. Suddenly a low whistle sounded on the left, followed instantly by another on the right; and like released springs the rustlers leaped into action.