The boy began to crawl out from under the cart, hastening to where he saw something lying in the grass. He had lain close to the spot where the mistress of Del Sol lay bundled up in blankets; and he had thrown around her a barricade of every saddle he could find, combined with every roll of blankets.
A bugle sounded, the signal for the two lines to close in. When they heard the rush of many feet on both sides of them Rudabaugh and his men knew that they were trapped by vastly superior numbers. Not many of them were left standing. Of these, all now sought quarter. There came cries of, “Don’t shoot! We surrender!” But the Del Sol men, fearing treachery, were merciless. When they had crowded together the remainder of the bandits the trail men rushed upon them with pistol butts and quirts and rifle barrels. The few left alive were roped and bound.
Of the score of assailants only two remained alive and uncaptured—Rudabaugh and the crafty man known as Baldy. Crouching low, they got off in the grass at the best speed they could muster, and until tally was made at the camp fire no one missed them. Not until daylight, indeed, could the full list of fatalities be determined. For the defenders there was but one casualty—Al Pendleton, who had got a shot through the leg and was disabled for the time.
What had been a trail camp was now anything but that. The men gathered their prisoners closer to the fire, built it up. A trooper dragged up Yellow Hand, barely conscious, sullen and silent.
“Here is your friend, gentlemen,” said Griswold grimly to the surviving men of the attacking party. “He did all he could for you. I ought to blow his brains out, and yours out, too, and I’ve a damned good mind to do it.”
He turned toward Dan McMasters, who had come to the fireside.
“Now about these men,” he said, “I am going to take them out with me on a charge of killing those Indian women down near the Arbuckles. They’re accessories anyway. I’ve got no jurisdiction and no warrant, and it isn’t my business; but what’s the Army for? Now about this old thief, I’m going to ask him a few questions.”
He jerked Yellow Hand roughly to his feet.
“Come here, Danny,” he called out to his interpreter. “Tell this old liar I want to ask him some questions.”
“Says he don’t want to talk,” began the interpreter, as the savage grunted a few sullen syllables.