"Give them a low volley. Look out, you fellows behind the cabin," ordered Tad. The volley came at about the instant that Tad threw himself on the ground. During the remaining few minutes the men in the cabin fired rapidly at the flashes of the rifles out there, but with poor results. Stacy Brown got a bullet through an arm—that is, it grazed the skin—because he decided that he could shoot better standing up. Chunky yelled that he was "shotted," but no one paid any attention to him.
Professor Zepplin was blazing away, while Ned and Royal lay flat on their stomachs back of the cabin, narrowly watching the window. Their patience was rewarded a few minutes later when the window, sash and all, burst out and a human being tumbled out. He scrambled to his feet.
"Halt. Drop your gun!" commanded Royal.
Instead the fellow ran. Royal brought him down with a bullet in the leg.
"Don't move. You are a dead man if you get up!" warned Ned. "If the bullets from the officers don't get you, one of ours will. I know you. You're Smoky Griffin and we've got you dead to rights this time, you miserable scoundrel. You won't do any more bluffing on this range for a long time to come, I reckon."
"Why not set fire to the cabin and smoke them out?" cried Walter Perkins.
"No, no, no," returned the Professor. "We must not destroy the evidence. Tad knows what to do and he is doing it bravely, like the man he is."
"Cease firing!" shouted Tad Butler. "They are asking for quarter."
"What do you wish us to do?" demanded Joe Batts.
"Lay down your arms and come out one by one. Don't try to go out by the rear window. I reckon one of your cayuses who tried it is lying on his back out there now."