“What the hell’s up?” queried Bill, grimly.
Guy Isbel remained silent and it was he who turned slightly pale. Jean leaped off his horse.
“Bernardino has just been killed—murdered with his own gun.”
Gaston Isbel seemed to exhale a long-dammed, bursting breath that let his chest sag. A terrible deadly glint, pale and cold as sunlight on ice, grew slowly to dominate his clear eyes.
“A-huh!” ejaculated Bill Isbel, hoarsely.
Not one of the three men asked who had done the killing. They were silent a moment, motionless, locked in the secret seclusion of their own minds. Then they listened with absorption to Jean’s brief story.
“Wal, that lets us in,” said his father. “I wish we had more time. Reckon I’d done better to listen to you boys an’ have my men close at hand. Jacobs happened to ride over. That makes five of us besides the women.”
“Aw, dad, you don’t reckon they’ll round us up heah?” asked Guy Isbel.
“Boys, I always feared they might,” replied the old man. “But I never really believed they’d have the nerve. Shore I ought to have figgered Daggs better. This heah secret bizness an’ shootin’ at us from ambush looked aboot Jorth’s size to me. But I reckon now we’ll have to fight without our friends.”
“Let them come,” said Jean. “I sent for Blaisdell, Blue, Gordon, and Fredericks. Maybe they’ll get here in time. But if they don’t it needn’t worry us much. We can hold out here longer than Jorth’s gang can hang around. We’ll want plenty of water, wood, and meat in the house.”