“Nonsense!” retorted Bowser. “You don’t mean to tell me that one lone horseman could bedevil my men and me, cut my fences, stampede my cattle and get away with fifty of ’em, do you? Man, you’re crazy!”
“I ain’t saying there warn’t more than one in the raid on the Double Cross,” returned Ki Yi. “What I said was there’s only one mixed up in this here night’s business.”
“Then, by thunder! get busy, you dubs, and corral him!” roared the owner of the Star and Moon. “The idea of one man being able to burn my buildings and get away when I’ve four men of my own and Bowser has two right on the spot!”
Stung by the scorn and disgust in the ranchman’s tones, Ki Yi, Dude and Deadshot were moving away to take some of the ponies the other members of the Star and Moon outfit had managed to catch when they were halted by Sandy’s words.
“I wouldn’t be too quick to break away, Hen,” he cautioned. “Your steers may be quiet enough now—the only fussing they’re doing is what is naturally to be expected with the fire flaring in their eyes—but I don’t doubt for a minute, there are five or six raiders in amongst ’em, ready to cut loose and stampede the critturs the minute they see us riding away. That’s probably part of their scheme—they’re counting on our giving chase to that ghostie. That’s probably why he’s sitting out there, so all-fired cool. It don’t stand to reason that a lone man would take such chances against eight when he could be hiking across the plains, putting distance between us and him while we’re making up our minds what to do.”
The obvious soundness of the foreman’s argument gave it instant attention from the ranch owners.
In the first place, it tended to lessen the odium of their having been thrown into a panic—in addition to being made to suffer very appreciable losses—by one man. And though their eyes showed them only a single raider, they were only too willing to believe that more of them were hidden among the cattle, merely awaiting a propitious moment to make their presence known.
Accordingly, they accepted more readily the suggestion of Sandy than was warranted in view of the fact that both Deadshot and Ki Yi believed the Midnight Raider was the lone horseman, spectral in appearance, that mocked them so tauntingly by remaining in plain sight of the destruction he had wrought.
“That’s more like the truth, Hen,” asserted the owner of the Double Cross, after he had deliberated over his foreman’s words a few moments. “Ki Yi and Deadshot always were excitable boys. It’s a good thing Sandy has a little common sense and the courage to express it, or we’d have been stampeded by the two of ’em into chasing that howling devil—and giving the rest of the gang the chance to carry off your cattle at their pleasure.”
“Righto!” returned Hawks. “There’s nothing pays more than making haste slowly.