A thick growth of pine and piñon ran up to the ridge above. Back of a scrub evergreen Houck dropped to consider a plan of action. He meant to get one of these horses, and to do this he must have it and be gone before dawn. This was probably some round-up. If he could drift around close to the camp and find a saddle, there would likely be a rope attached to it. He might, of course, be seen, but he would have to take a chance on that.
Chance befriended him to his undoing. As he crept through the brush something caught his ankle and he stumbled. His groping fingers found a rope. One end of the rope was attached to a stake driven into the ground. The other led to a horse, a pinto, built for spirit and for speed, his trained eye could tell.
He pulled up the stake and wound up the rope, moving toward the pinto as he did so. He decided it would be better not to try to get a saddle till he reached Tolliver’s place. The rope would do for a bridle at a pinch.
The horse backed away from him, frightened at this stranger who had appeared from nowhere. He followed, trying in a whisper to soothe the animal. It backed into a small piñon, snapping dry branches with its weight.
Houck cursed softly. He did not want to arouse anybody in the camp or to call the attention of the night jinglers to his presence. He tried to lead the pinto away, but it balked and dug its forefeet into the ground, leaning back on the rope.
The outlaw murmured encouragement to the horse. Reluctantly it yielded to the steady pull on its neck. Man and beast began to move back up the hill. As soon as he was a safe distance from the camp, Houck meant to make of the rope a bridle.
In the pre-dawn darkness he could see little and that only as vague outlines rather than definite shapes. But some instinct warned the hunted man that this was no round-up camp. He did not quite know what it was. Yet he felt as though he were on the verge of a discovery, as though an unknown but terrible danger surrounded him. Unimaginative he was, but something that was almost panic flooded up in him.
He could not wait to mount the horse until he had reached the brow of the hill. Drawing the rope close, he caught at the mane of the horse and bent his knees for the spring.
Houck had an instant’s warning, and his revolver was half out of its scabbard when the rush of the attack flung him against the startled animal. He fought like a baited bear, exerting all his great strength to fling back the figures that surged up at him out of the darkness. From all sides they came at him, with guttural throat cries, swarming over each other as he beat them down.
The struggling mass quartered over the ground like some unwieldy prehistoric reptile. Houck knew that if he lost his footing he was done for. Once, as the cluster of fighters swung downhill, the outlaw found himself close to the edge of the group. He got his arms free and tried to beat off those clinging to him. Out of the mêlée he staggered, a pair of arms locked tightly round his thighs. Before he could free himself another body flung itself at his shoulder and hurled him from his feet.