The man on the ground suddenly gave an upward heave, grasped at the weapon, and let out a yell for help that echoed back from the cliff, while the cattleman let the butt of the revolver crash heavily down upon his face. The heavy gun came down three times before the struggling outlaw would subside, and then not before blood streamed from ugly gashes into his eyes.
“I’ve had enough, damn you!” the fellow muttered sullenly. “What do you want with me?”
“You’ll go along with me. Let out another sound, and I’ll bump you off. Get a move on you.”
Jack got to his feet and dragged up his prisoner. The man was a heavy-set, bowlegged fellow of about forty, hard-faced, and shifty-eyed—a frontier miscreant, unless every line of the tough, leathery countenance told a falsehood. But he had made his experiment and failed. He knew what manner of man 213 his captor was, and he had no mind for another lesson from him. He slouched to his horse, under propulsion of the revolver, and led the animal into the gulch.
Both mounted, Jack keeping the captive covered every moment of the time; and they began to retrace the way by which the young cattleman had just come.
After they had ridden about a quarter of a mile Flatray made a readjustment of the rope. He let the loop lie loosely about the neck of the outlaw, the other end of it being tied to the horn of his own saddle. Also, he tied the hands of the man in such a way that, though they were free to handle the bridle rein, he could not raise them from the saddle as high as his neck.
“If you make any sudden moves, you’ll be committing suicide. If you yell out, it will amount to about the same thing. It’s up to you to be good, looks like.”
The man cursed softly. He knew that the least attempt to escape or to attract the attention of his confederates would mean his undoing. Something about this young man’s cold eye and iron jaw told him that he would not hesitate to shoot, if necessary.
Voices came to them from the cañon. Flatray guessed that a reconnaissance of the gulch would be made, and prepared himself for it by deflecting his course from the bed of the arroyo at a point where the walls fell back to form a little valley. A 214 little grove of aspens covered densely the shoulder of a hillock some fifty yards back, and here he took his stand. He dismounted, and made his prisoner do the same.
“Sit down,” he ordered crisply.