Ty glared at Promotheus durin’ the few minutes he was questionin’ him, and then they all went back towards the ranch house. The woman went on to her own cabin, and Ty blew on the horn which hung at the side of the door, and that sneak of a Dixon came on the run, as though he had no idee what was wanted. Actin’ under orders from Ty, he took The’s gun and then tied his hands behind him and shut him up in an out buildin’ near the stables. There didn’t appear to be any one else about the ranch, and I suggested that we make a rush and take possession right then.
While we were debatin’ it, we saw the punchers comin’ in from the east, across the crick. There were about a dozen of ’em, strung out and ridin’ hard the way they generally rode.
“They’re likely to string him up this very night,” sez I; “and we’ll have to settle this business before sun-up.”
“They are not likely to be in any hurry,” sez the Friar. “If we go to-night it will mean a lot o’ bloodshed. To-morrow they will go out on the range again, and we stand a good chance of rescuing him without even a fight.”
Olaf, of course, sided with the Friar, Horace sided with me, and we had a purty heated discussion. The Friar argued that he had the most at stake and had a right to select the plan with the least risk. I argued that Promotheus had the most at stake, and we had no right to take risk into account. We got purty excited, I usin’ the word coward freely, while the Friar stuck to the word folly and kept cooler ’n I did. He finally won ’em over to a compromise. We were to go down close and keep watch durin’ the night; but not to make a rush until we saw Promotheus actually in instant danger.
[CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT—OLAF RUNS THE BLOCKADE]
Ty Jones had been as wise as a fox when he located his ranch house. It sat on high ground, while back of it rose a cliff; so ’at the only way you could get to it without ropes from the back, was through the little ravine. The cliffs circled around to the crick on both sides, and the crick was so full o’ rocks that the’ was only two places a hoss could cross. He had strung barb wire through the cottonwoods in a regular tangle along the crick, and the only places he had to watch in case of an attack, were the ravine and these two fords. He could see for miles in all directions by goin’ to the head o’ the ravine; and you could hardly pick out a purtier place for a last-stand ’n the one he had selected.
The new cabin for the woman was right in front o’ the mouth o’ the ravine, the old cabin a hundred yards or so farther on, the cook-house and the Chink’s quarters to the north o’ this, the mess-hall for the men to the east of this, the barn, wagon-sheds, workshop, and so on, some distance to the south, and the bunk-shack a little to the north of the stables. He had several corrals back o’ the barn and a pasture of about thirty acres shut in by a wire fence.
After I had cooled off a little, I saw that the Friar was right. The thing we couldn’t tell was, just how much they had forced Promotheus to confess. If they had simply got Ty jealous that he was tryin’ to get the woman away, we might make it all the worse by chargin’ down on ’em; while on the other hand he might have told where we were, and Ty might take it into his head to try to get us all. This last would have been the finest thing ’at could happen to us; but the’ was no way to tell; so after eatin’ supper, we went down to the edge o’ the cliff to see what we could see.
We were most of us surprised to see how far the cabin stood from the cliff. In lookin’ down from our look-out, we had failed to take the slope into account so it had looked as though we had been able to see the woman the minute she had come out o’ the mouth of the ravine, while the fact was the cabin stood several hundred feet from the mouth. If it hadn’t been for the confounded dogs, we could have gone down and found out what we wanted to know. We made some remarks about those dogs which would have seared their hair off if they’d ’a’ been a little closer.