"Now, Bill, ring that anxious bell for Coyote Kal."
Bill stepped over to the barn and rung a small bell affixed to its outer wall.
"Now, Kal, I want you to tell your men that they are trespassers on this property, and that you will be graciously permitted to withdraw if you do so at once and without trouble. If they stop to discuss the matter, there'll be a fight, and I don't think there'll be enough of you left to get away. Bill will occupy the stable and I will occupy the house, and if there is any show of resistance by your men you and Curley will be the first to meet your Maker; and I think you need more time for preparation."
"You sure ain't prepared," ejaculated Bill. "You sure ain't."
The ranch house was a mixture of styles. A log-cabin met an adobe addition at right angles. Each was supplied with a door, flanked by a window, and a portico leaned wearily against the house in various attitudes of discouragement. Hal took his stand in the shelter of the angle. He had the house on two sides of him. His position was exposed to the stable, where Bill was secreted, and the space between the house and stable was completely dominated by them both. One could have read a paper in the moonlight.
"My, it's clear to-night," said Hal, surveying the situation with a grin of satisfaction. "Anyway it happens it looks to me as if you two out there were a sure thing."
This was perfectly plain to Kal and Curley, but outside the purely physical situation they were completely dazed. McShay and his men were supposed to be looking out for their interests at the conference at the Agency, and here was Ladd's chief of police claiming their ranch and putting them forcibly off the ground they had bought and paid for.
They merely got a vague impression that this was just an effort on the part of Ladd to shift the battle ground. But as their brains worked slowly over it nothing seemed to fit into this theory. And it was part of Hal's plan to leave them no time to think. He realized that his only chance of success was in rushing them off their feet. It was a perilous game in which time was to be a deciding factor.
As suggested by Kal, the bell was an alarm that called all the men on the ranch in for instructions. They came, and quickly, and all armed; some fifteen men. As they came into view their amazement was comic at the sight of Curley and their boss sitting on a bench side by side in the moonlight like two naughty boys kept in at school.
"Speak your little piece, Kal," urged Hal.