“We’ll all go up together,” decided Nora, and honors were easy.
In the pleasant moonlight they sauntered back, two of them still engaged in lively badinage, while the third played chorus with appreciative little giggles and murmurs of “Oh, Mr. Halliday!” and “You know you’re just flattering me, Mr. McWilliams.”
If they had not been so absorbed in their gay foolishness the two men might not have walked so innocently into the trap waiting for them at their journey’s end. As it was, the first intimation they had of anything unusual was a stern command to surrender.
“Throw up your hands. Quick, you blank fools!”
A masked man covered them, in each hand a six-shooter, and at his summons the arms of the cow-punchers went instantly into the air.
Nora gave an involuntary little scream of dismay.
“Y’u don’t need to be afraid, lady. Ain’t nobody going to hurt you, I reckon,” the masked man growled.
“Sure they won’t,” Mac reassured her, adding ironically: “This gun-play business is just neighborly frolic. Liable to happen any day in Wyoming.”
A second masked man stepped up. He, too was garnished with an arsenal.
“What’s all this talking about?” he demanded sharply.