“That’s the horse!” he added to one of his men as he rode apart and looked down on the dusty ground. “Shoe off, right front, and hoof split. They was plumb up to the gate of Del Sol.”
“Yes, and we’ll get our cows yet,” exclaimed Rudabaugh savagely, as a ranger nodded to old Sanchez, who now deftly bound each man’s feet together under his horse’s belly with a Spanish knot that bid fair to stay set.
“So?” The young rider’s smile was pleasant. “Now, how’d you all like to have back your guns and an even break, you to begin right now to cut that Del Sol herd?”
“I know there’s cows in that herd that ain’t in the T.L. Brand.”
“Well, they’ll all be in our road brand before sundown two days,” cut in Jim Nabours now. “You lying, low-down dog, I wish to God these boys hadn’t came! There’s only one way to handle people like you. Git out of jail—and come back! That’s all we hope.
“McCullough, do you want any more men?” he added.
“Why?” The youth laughed and rode away. “Fall in there, prisoners!” he commanded. “Ride for the ferry trail. I wouldn’t try to ride too fast.”
“Oh, we’ll be back!” called the gang captain, defiant still.
“I certainly do hope you will!” replied Nabours fervently. “I’ll come all the way back from Aberlene, ef I ever get there, just to be around here when you-all do come!”
A chorus of jeers and curses came back from the prisoners. The Rangers said never a word, but herded their men on ahead.
Jim Nabours jerked up his mount—a sign to the herd riders, and the latter swung away, glad enough to have the herd still under control. The animals began to edge out, to thin, to spread, to graze. Old Jim Nabours rode to the edge, singing a song of his own, as he sometimes did when especially wrathful:
“_Bud Dunk, he was a Ranger, a Ranger of renown,_ _But says he to the cashier when he ride into the town._ _Says he, ‘I need some money that the bank here owes to me._ _So please to make it plenty, fer I’m broke ez I kin be——’”_
A scattering chorus came to him, roared out of the rising dust cloud:
“_Oh, please, sir, make it plenty, fer we’re broke ez we kin be!_”
“CUSS take the law!” fumed old Jim Nabours. “I never seen nothing but trouble come out of law. Ef it wouldn’t of been for them Ranger boys we’d of killed Rudabaugh and his outfit right here, and that’d of ended the whole business. Courts? They own the courts; they’ll all be out and at it again inside a week. Ef they meet up with us again I shore hope there won’t be no Rangers. When come it a cowman can’t take care of his own cows?