Bang! boomed a gun from the North.
In amazement, the cowboys wheeled.
And even as they did, a bullet whistled through the air, carrying the sombrero from Bowser’s head.
“Douse the torches! It gives ’em a line on us!” cried Deadshot in alarm, lest a second shell might find its man.
No urging did the ranch owner or any of his men need to make them obey. The shot had been too well aimed and had come too close to its mark for them to care to make targets of themselves for gunmen who could show such skill at night.
But, as they hurled the torches to the ground, the ranchman rose in his stirrups.
“You may have the drop on me now!” he roared, shaking his fist in wrathful impotence in the direction whence the shot had come. “But just wait! Nobody can steal Sam Bowser’s cattle, scare his men, shoot at him and get away with it!
“So long as there is a breath of life in my body, I’ll trail you—and I’ll run you to your lair, mark my word!”
The tone in which the owner of the Double Cross spoke, the dim outline of his tall figure as he swayed in his saddle, his arm beating the air in his fury, as he vowed revenge against the miscreants who had stampeded his cattle and tried to murder him, afforded an effect dramatic in the extreme.
Yet, scarcely had the last words left his lips than again a gun barked and a bullet “pinged” viciously as it sailed over his head!