After an age, as it had seemed to Mason, of this kind of travel they reached a small plateau high in the mountains. Big Joe, who was in advance, called a halt, and raised a warning hand.
“Keep quiet as possible, men,” he said as the cowboys dismounted and crowded around him.
“There is Devil’s Gap just to the right of us a within good rifle shot. Scotty must be close by, too. Now, if the halfbreed and Powers are waiting there for Bud, they will keep under cover until he and his men show themselves through the pass. What we have got to do is to pick off the halfbreed’s men before they can get in their deadly work. I figure that they will show themselves just as soon as Bud gets through the pass. We won’t be able to see Bud’s men from here, but them devils will have to show themselves to us, and it’s up to you men to get them first.”
The men silently unslung their saddle guns. They each carried a thirty-thirty Remington repeater. Lying prone on the ground, they covered the plateau of Devil’s Gap while the minutes passed slowly. It was a range of about four hundred yards.
From a point of rock which they had their eyes glued upon, they saw the form of a man rise up with a leveled rifle in his hands.
“Bud must be coming through the pass, get that fellow!” Big Joe cried in a hoarse whisper.
Before the words had died from his mouth a shot rang out and the man with the gun pitched forward.
The shot that laid him low had come from somewhere on their left.
“That’s Scotty getting in some of his fine work,” Big Joe said with a chuckle.
Instantly five other men sprang from behind the rock and the firing became general. At the first shot Bud and his men had charged through the pass and taken to cover. Scotty’s shot had warned Bud that something was amiss and had put him on his guard. The firing had become too hot for the halfbreed and his cut-throats, and they had dropped back behind the rock again.