While they were still engulfed in this mantle they felt their guns rudely jerked from their hands and fierce clutches taken upon their garments. But the relief was so great when they reached the blessed air in the canyon, almost free from the acrid fumes of that terrible stink weed, that for the moment they could think of nothing else.
Each of them stood there, blinking, and rubbing their smarting eyes. Rude laughter jarred on their nerves, and they began to observe that a circle of lawless punchers stood around, apparently quite amused at the sight of their agony.
“Seems ter me thar was four o’ the tenderfeet kids; how ’bout that, Ally?” one of the rustlers observed in a voice that sounded like the grumble of thunder.
Ned managed to look at the speaker, and he just seemed to know without being told that this giant must be the “awful dad” of the lad Amos, whom they had helped out of the quicksand. He was indeed a striking figure, and must inspire terror in almost any man who happened to run counter to his will. When Hy Adams growled his dislike for anything, plans were apt to be hastily changed, and in a fashion calculated to suit his whim.
There was another alongside who caught Ned’s especial attention, too. He had only to take note of the fact that this tall party bore a scar on his left cheek to feel confident that this must be the rustler chief, Clem Parsons, who had played fast and loose with the United States Government, so that his apprehension by the Secret Service officers was apt to put quite a feather in the cap of the one fortunate enough to cause his arrest.
“There was four of ’em,” Ally Sloper observed, as he pushed forward at this juncture and faced the prisoners; and raising his voice he turned to Ned and added: “Where’d that other feller skip out to? Was he knocked over by our fire? We know that he never got away, we had the canyon blocked with a cork in the neck of the bottle.”
“We’ve lost him, somehow,” Ned replied, brokenly, as though deeply grieved by the fact; “and we hope you’ll look around and find our chum, who may be bleeding to death somewhere in the canyon behind a rock.”
His eagerness to have them search seemed to allay any suspicion that may have started to arise.
“Oh! we’ll give a sort of look when we’re getting out of this hole,” the man Ned took to be Clem Parsons observed carelessly; “but it’s too unpleasant around these diggings right now to stay any longer than we have to. Later on, if we happen to think of it, we may come back and look him up. Get a move on now, boys, and we’ll strike for the upper camp.”
Those who had hold of the three prisoners urged them forward, and it was evident that they meant to leave the vicinity of the recent fight. When Ned was sure of this he allowed himself to have a most violent fit of coughing, and managed to mix in several significant signals that were not unlike the howl of the wolf in the stillness of a night on the open plain.