"Injuns!" cried the dusty man. "Injuns on Hatchet Creek! I want help!"
In thirty seconds there was a fair-sized group surrounding the horseman. In a minute and a half the group had become a crowd. Up bustled Marshal Dan Smith followed by Telescope Laguerre, Jim Mace, and the gentleman from the Barred O. Loudon, first on the scene, was jammed against the rider's stirrup.
"Gents," the dusty man was saying, "my three pardners are a-standin' off the war-whoops in a shack over by Johnson's Peak on Hatchet Creek. There's more'n a hundred o' them feather-dusters an' they'll have my pardners' hair if yuh don't come a-runnin'."
"Johnson's Peak!" exclaimed Jim Mace. "That's fifty mile away!"
"All o' that," assented the dusty man, wearily, without turning his head. "For God's sake, gents, do somethin', can't yuh? An' gimme a fresh hoss."
Already three quarters of his hearers were streaking homeward for their Winchesters and saddles. The men from the ranches were the last to move away. No need for them to hurry. The few who had brought rifles to the Bend had left them with their saddles at the various corrals.
Within half an hour the dusty man, mounted on one of the marshal's ponies, was heading a posse composed of every available man in Paradise Bend. Only the marshal and two men who were sick remained behind.
The posse, a column of black and bobbing shapes in the starlight, loped steadily. Many of the ponies had travelled twenty and thirty miles that day, and there were fifty more to pass under their hoofs. The average cow-horse is a hardy brute and can perform miracles of work when called upon. Secure in this knowledge, the riders fully intended to ride out their mounts to the last gasp.
Doubleday and Dawson rode stirrup to stirrup with the man from Hatchet Creek. Tailing these three were Loudon, Telescope Laguerre, the Barred O puncher, and Jim Mace.
"How'd yuh get through, stranger?" queried Doubleday.