"Bueno!" said The Kid. "I see yo' got the job done without much trouble. But wheah's the othah two?"
Scotty smiled grimly, spat in the direction of the fire and said simply:
"They showed fight."
In five minutes, the six outlaws were tied securely with lariat rope, in spite of their fervent and profane protests.
"Jack Hardy will get yuh fer this, blast yuh!" snarled one.
"Maybe," drawled The Kid sweetly, "he won't want us aftah he gets us."
They planned to have the cattle moving northward by dawn. Once past Midway, the trail to Dodge was clear. But there was plenty of work to do in the meantime.
An hour after sunup, the herd of fifteen hundred steers was moving northward toward Midway. Kid Wolf and his four riders had them well under control, and had it not been for a certain alertness in their bearing, one would have thought it an ordinary cattle drive.
Kid Wolf was singing to the longhorns in a half-mocking, drawling tenor, as he rode slowly along:
"Oh, the desaht winds are blowin', on the Rio!
And we'd like to be a-goin', back to Rio!
But befo' we do,
We've got to see this through,
Like all good hombres do, from the Rio!"