"Do as you're told and no harm'll come to you," he said quietly. Then he turned to Bill and said: "Shall we go on or shall we wait for the others? They must have the ranch surrounded by this time."
"I guess you and I can persuade 'em resistance would be useless."
This was to impress the prisoner who was by this time in an impressionable frame of mind.
"All right. Now, Curley," he said to the man whom he recognized; "we got the drop on you fellows. While McShay and your crowd have been gabbing over at the Agency we've got you cornered. Now I want you to walk ahead of us to the house, then call Coyote Kal out and we'll do the rest. Bill will have you covered from the stable and I will have you covered from behind the rock (meaning the rock that marked Nat-u-ritch's grave). If you give us away, neither of us could miss you. You're a dead man twice," he added with a laugh. His ill-humor always vanished in action. When the three men reached the barns, Hal made a short detour, crawling on his hands and knees until he was in the shelter of the rough, undressed bowlder which his father had hauled down from the canyons to mark the grave of the little Indian woman who had been his wife and the mother of the son who now crouched behind it, oblivious for the moment of everything except the dangerous business in hand. Then Bill untied Curley and pointed to the house opposite. The space over which Curley walked slowly was bathed in a flood of light. There didn't seem any way out of the predicament, so Curley stood before the adobe house and called softly: "Kal—Kal."
As this was repeated a sleepy voice within growled: "What the hell?" Then a tousled head appeared at the window and said: "That you, Curley? What's up? Has a messenger come from the Agency?"
"Yes. Come on out," urged Curley. "It's important."
The other man drew his trousers on and came out into the moonlight.
"What is it?" Then he noticed. "Where's your gun?"
"They took it away from me."
"They? What are you talking about?"