“I appreciate this, boys; I sure do!” Buck’s tall figure straightened up. “Well, I give you the worst end of the talk on the start. It’s true that Sam Fisher is playin’ a winning hand so far, but he ain’t raked in the pot by a long sight! He’s bluffed out Tracy, and he’s got Pahrump buffaloed—but all he’s got behind him is the Circle Bar, and we’ve got Jake Harper here. That means we got to wipe out Sam Fisher to win the pot!”
“And Steve Arnold,” corrected Davitt. Buck nodded.
“Yep. Them two, y’ understand. They’re over to the Lazy S, as I get it, while Harper’s bunch has us held up here. Also, we can’t afford to drop Fisher when, he comes to arrest me; it’d look too much like he was killed in the performance of his duty, y’ understand? We want to fix it so nobody won’t know jest what happened. Do you foller me?”
“You bet!” came the admiring response. “How ye goin’ to work it?”
Buck was silent for a moment, his eyes searching the surrounding country. Not a sign of the Circle Bar men was in evidence, but well he knew that they were waiting, grimly hidden.
Almost any man, given the opportunity, will shoot rather than be sent to the penitentiary, and Buck was now perfectly cool and steady in his resolute air. He had everything to gain and nothing to lose, and a single bold, well-planned stroke might yet save him from the brink of disaster.
“Twelve of us,” he murmured. “We might work it! How many horses in the corral, Sandy?”
“Close to thirty,” returned Davitt at once.
“And the Circle Bar lays right up the valley from the Lazy S. Anybody at Shumway’s would be sure to see the Circle Bar if she was burnin’, I guess?”
Davitt straightened up in surprise.