This man’s body remained quite motionless as his horse plodded on with hanging head, but his small black eyes darted from side to side ceaselessly.
It was in one of these quick glances that he experienced 222 a blinding flash upon his retina. A second later it occurred again, and then a third time. Suspiciously the man drew his horse to a stand, and those behind him did likewise.
Stelton thought for a moment that there must have been an outbreak from the near-by Wind River or Shoshone Reservation, and that the Indians were heliographing to one another. Presently, in an open space between the edges of two buttes he caught the flash close to the ground.
It probably was a tin can left by a herder—they often flashed that way—but he would prove it before he went on. He took from their case the pair of field-glasses that swung from his shoulder and raised them to his eyes.
What he saw caused him to swear excitedly and order the company to back out of sight.
At the same instant Jimmie Welsh, holding a straight flush, looked up triumphantly at Billy Speaker who had just raised him. He looked over Billy’s shoulder and the smile froze on his face. He continued to look, and the cards dropped one by one out of his hand. Then his face became stern and he jumped to his feet.
“No more of this,” he ordered. “We’re discovered. You fellows get back out of sight,” he added to the cowmen. “Here, Harry, Bill, 223 Chuck, search these fellers again an’ see they ain’t got nothin’ in their shoes.”
“What ails yuh, Jimmie? Are yuh locoed?” asked a man who had not understood the sudden change in Welsh.
“I plenty wish I was,” came the reply, “but I ain’t. We’ve been discovered, an’ we’ve got to fight. I don’t know how many there was in the other party, but I ’low we ain’t in it noways. Red an’ Plug, you take yore horses round the butte to where the others are tethered, an’ help Jimmie and Newt bring in them casks o’ water. They ought to be back from the spring by this time. Tip, Lem, and Jack, help me put our friends here in the most-sheltered places.”
In a moment the camp that had been sleepy and placid was bustling with a silent, grim activity. From secret places men produced Winchesters, revolvers, and knives, if they carried them. In half an hour all the food had been brought in, and the casks of water laboriously filled at a brackish pool five miles away.