"My hands are up!" came desperately out of the darkness.
"They'd better be!" retorted Bud. "Can you get off and tie him, Nort?" the boy rancher called to his cousin. "Get out your gun, Dick, and cover him! He's going to be a bad actor, I'm saying!"
"I'm through!" came the sullen response from the man on the ground. "My gun went off by accident."
"Such accidents aren't healthy around here," grimly spoke Bud. "Get at him, fellows!"
"Who is he?" asked Nort, as he slipped from his pony, throwing the reins forward and on the ground as notice that the animal was to stand.
"And what's that funny smell?" asked Dick. "It's like—like the time we found the five dead steers!"
"Yes, and there'll be more dead steers as the result of this!" said Bud, and there was a choking in his voice.
A moment later Dick and Nort were standing over the prostrate figure of Pocut Pete. His arms were bound firmly to his sides by the tight coil of the lariat, held taut by Bud, and the other boys could see that the cowboy's gun had slipped from its holster and lay some distance away from him. Nort picked up the gun, and then, with quick motions, he and Dick bound some coils of Bud's rope around the rascal's feet.
All the fight seemed taken out of him. Without his gun, down on the ground and his pony out of reach—he lacked all the prime requisites of a cowboy. There was no escape, covered as he was by Bud, who had drawn his own .45, and Pocut Pete "jest natcherly caved in," as Old Billee described it later.
"Caught you at it, just as I thought I would!" said Bud, when Pete was bound and hoisted up on his horse by the boys.