Tug Conners was a daredevil and desperado who would shoot first and ask questions afterwards, and it was to this man that MacNutt would have to pass muster. The guard set himself and studied the rider through his glasses. The watcher swore softly. The slow gait of the horse and its rider’s awkward position in the saddle had him puzzled.
Twice he raised the rifle at his side and covered the stranger, only to lower it each time in disgust. Seizing the glasses again he tried to make out who the stranger was. An exclamation burst from his lips, for this time he had a close view of the rider.
“Well, I’ll be damned!” he swore furiously, “I remember that freak, he was with the sheriff when they made that call on Ricker. He looks like a damn fool and acts the part. Wonder what the tenderfoot can want here?”
Tug was bitterly disappointed as he had hoped the rider would prove to be one of the sheriff’s cowboys, and he would have started trouble with any of them at the slightest provocation. He hated them all intensely, but with this fellow it was different.
Tug couldn’t bring himself to pick trouble with a half-wit, so he determined to throw a scare into him and run him off the ranch.
He was crouched behind a small mound and as MacNutt came abreast his place of concealment he sprang up and covered him with his rifle.
“Stretch your arms!” Tug commanded him, his eyes glittering savagely, “I reckon this is about your limit. Who let you out, anyway?”
MacNutt’s hands went up with alacrity, and such a look of dismay spread over his features that he brought a grin to Tug’s face.
“Get down off that horse,” he next commanded him, keeping the rifle on a line with his heart.
“Don’t keep that cannon pointed at me, it makes me nervous,” protested MacNutt in a trembling voice as he laboriously dismounted.