“The fence has been cut! The fence has been cut!” roared Sandy, at the top of his lungs.
“There’s no use trying to hold the critturs. Come on back to Sam and we’ll find out what he wants us to do,” returned Deadshot.
Aware that with the cattle dashing away in all points of the compass, it was an impossible task for them to hope to round them up or even to try to hold the ones that had not already gone, Pinky and Deadshot rode back with their foreman until they came to the ranch owner.
“What’s to do?” asked Pinky, after the fact that the barbed wire fence had been cut in several places had been reported to Bowser.
“Lay for Mr. Spook!” snapped the owner of the Double Cross. “I’ll give any one of you a thousand dollars for his dead body! We’ll each of us take one side of the corral and patrol it.”
“But we haven’t got out rifles, only our six shooters,” interrupted Deadshot.
“Then ride for all your worth to the bunkhouse and get them! While you’re there, just tell the missus what’s up. Then hurry back. And say, bring some torches,” he shouted, as the thought that lights might prove useful came to him, for his man was already racing for the guns.
“That’s some trick,” muttered Sandy, while they waited. “Wonder was there more than one of ’em?”
“Sure,” asserted Pinky. “There was probably three or four of ’em working on the fence, cutting the wires, while the other played ghostie!”
This opinion of the numerical strength of the Midnight Raiders, which found ready acceptance from Bowser and Sandy, was later to be proved false, however!