“Hell!” he muttered. “I wanted him to pull up the junk first. However, I’ll manage, I guess.”
He proceeded to tie to the riata his own and Grady’s rifle. Then he swung himself aloft.
But he was not half way up when a rifle bullet flattened itself on the rock not a foot from his head.
“Hands up!” came a voice from below.
“By God, ain’t they up now?” muttered the outlaw grimly, as he jerked himself to a higher foothold. A few more springs and he was standing on the ledge. Then, when a second bullet knocked off his hat, he ducked and scurried along the narrow footway almost as quickly as Grady had done, and was gone from the view of the two riflemen lower down the canyon.
“Come on,” exclaimed Roderick. “They don’t seem to have any guns. We’ll get them yet.”
Buell Hampton followed to the foot of the cliff. The rifles tied to the lariat showed that the fugitives were in truth disarmed, so far at least as long-distance weapons were concerned. The Major carefully hid the rifles in a clump of brushwood.
They were now prepared to follow, but caution had to be used, for Bud Bledsoe no doubt had a brace of revolvers at his belt. Roderick climbed up the rope first, while Buell Hampton, with his Springfield raised, kept watch for the slightest sign of an enemy above. But the fugitives had not lingered. Roderick, from the edge of the cliff, called on the Major to make the ascent, and a few minutes later they stood side by side.
High up on the snow-clad face of the mountain were the fleeing figures of Grady and Bledsoe. Yes, they were making in the direction of the Ferris-Haggerty Road. Grant would certainly intercept them, while Roderick and the Major stalked the quarry from the rear.
“I intend to get that thousand-dollar reward for Bud Bledsoe’s hide,” laughed Roderick, slipping a cartridge into the chamber of his rifle.