“Then whatcha make all this gun play for?” asked Gene Hill.
“Because a lot of —— fools like you ain’t got brains enough to try a man before yuh hang him. Our answers to your questions wouldn’t suit yuh at all, so we’d get hung. Sleepy, go out and get the horses ready, while I keep ’em interested.”
Sleepy slid carefully outside. Old Sam Hodges laughed softly and some one questioned him in a whisper.
“Why?” asked the old man. “Can’t I laugh if I want to? I was just thinkin’ that it would be impossible for one man to stick us up, but it ain’t. I ain’t got no more desire to draw a gun than I have to go swimmin’. That one man ain’t got no more license to keep the drop on us than anything, but he’s doin’ it.”
“Against the law of averages,” admitted Hashknife smiling. “But it’s psychology, Hodges. I’m doin’ this to save my life. If killin’ me would save yore lives, I’d live about a second. Don’tcha see the edge I’ve got? I’ve got everythin’ to gain; you’d have everythin’ to lose, without a chance of personal gain.”
Came a low whistle from Sleepy, who had led the horses up to the doorway. Hashknife backed half way through the partly open door, still covering the crowd. Then he fired one shot directly over their heads, ducked back and sprang for his horse.
In a moment they were both mounted and spurring for the gate, while the demoralized crowd in the bunk house bumped into each other, swearing, questioning, trying to find out if anybody had been hit. The shot had held them long enough for Hashknife and Sleepy to disappear in the night, and when the crowd did manage to get outside, there was not even the sound of galloping hoofs to tell which way the two men had gone.
Some of the men mounted their horses, but did not leave the ranch. There was considerable speculation as to where they might go, but Lo Lo Valley was a wide place in which to search for two men in the dark. They went back into the bunk house, where the sheriff was besieged with a barrage of questions. He admitted that he had nothing except his own suspicions to work on, but he pointed out that they had all been held up at the point of a gun, and that the two men had made their getaway.
“Yeah, they’re guilty of somethin’,” declared Gene Hill.
“Guilty of havin’ brains,” growled Sam Hodges.