“Haven’t y’u got one to scribble?” Bannister retorted. “Seems to me y’u better get busy, too.”
So it happened that when Missou arrived a few minutes later he found this pair of gentlemen, who were about to flee for their lives, busily inditing what McWilliams had termed facetiously billets-doux. Each of them was trying to make his letter a little warmer than friendship allowed without committing himself to any chance of a rebuff. Mac got as far as Nora Darling, absentmindedly inserted a comma between the words, and there stuck hopelessly. He looked enviously across at Bannister, whose pencil was traveling rapidly down his note-book.
“My, what a swift trail your pencil leaves on that paper. That’s going some. Mine’s bogged down before it got started. I wisht y’u would start me off.”
“Well, if you ain’t up and started a business college already. I had ought to have brought a typewriter along with me,” murmured Missou ironically.
“How are things stacking? Our friends the enemy getting busy yet?” asked Bannister, folding and addressing his note.
“That’s what. Orders gone out to guard every road so as not to let you pass. What’s the matter with me rustling up the boys and us holding down a corner of this town ourselves?”
The sheepman shook his head. “We’re not going to start a little private war of our own. We couldn’t do that without spilling a lot of blood. No, we’ll make a run for it.”
“That y’u, Denver?” the foreman called softly, as the sound of approaching horses reached him.
“Bet your life. Got your own broncs, too. Sheriff Burns called up Daniels not to let any horses go out from his corral to anybody without his O.K. I happened to be cinching at the time the ’phone message came, so I concluded that order wasn’t for me, and lit out kinder unceremonious.”
Hastily the fugitives donned the new costumes and dominos, turned their notes over to Denver, and swung to their saddles.