“Hey! Stop in your tracks, Bill, or I'll sure bore you!” Shorty thundered, drawing and leveling two Colt's forty-fours. “Step another step in your steps an' I let eleven holes through your danged ornery carcass. Get that?”
Saltman stopped, perplexed.
“He sure got me,” Shorty mumbled to Smoke. “But if he goes on I'm up against it hard. I can't shoot. What'll I do?”
“Look here, Shorty, listen to reason,” Saltman begged.
“Come here to me an' we'll talk reason,” was Shorty's retort.
And they were still talking reason when the head of the stampede emerged from the zigzag trail and came upon them.
“You can't call a man a trespasser when he's on a town-site lookin' to buy lots,” Wild Water was arguing, and Shorty was objecting: “But they's private property in town-sites, an' that there strip is private property, that's all. I tell you again, it ain't for sale.”
“Now we've got to swing this thing on the jump,” Smoke muttered to Shorty. “If they ever get out of hand—”
“You've sure got your nerve, if you think you can hold them,” Shorty muttered back. “They's two thousan' of 'em an' more a-comin'. They'll break this line any minute.”
The line ran along the near rim of the ravine, and Shorty had formed it by halting the first arrivals when they got that far in their invasion. In the crowd were half a dozen Northwest policemen and a lieutenant. With the latter Smoke conferred in undertones.