The explosion came, at that moment, but it was not as Matt expected. While Newt Prebbles stood facing Matt, his back to the broker, there came the sound of a blow.
Pain convulsed Newt's face for the fraction of a second, his eyes closed, and he dropped senseless, overturning Matt and his chair with the force of his fall.
Lying bound and helpless, Matt heard sounds of quick footsteps, and saw Murgatroyd bending down over him.
Joe McGlory and Ping were in a fine good humor. They had left the horses and rifles for the Tin Cup men and, from the top of a distant hill, they had watched the party recover the live stock and the guns. Then, laughing and congratulating themselves, the boys had ducked in among the cottonwoods of the creek bottom and started along the trail to the river.
"Plenty fine," chattered Ping. "By Klismus, my gettee heap fun this tlip. Woosh!"
"We played 'em to a fare-you-well," laughed McGlory, pausing to extend his hand to Ping. "Shake, my little heathen brother! You're the finest bit of the Yellow Peril that ever landed in the U. S. You've got a head on you, you have. Why, you savvied right off what I wanted you to do with those guns, and I didn't have to say a word."
"My savvy look you makee all same eye," chuckled Ping. "Top-side pidgin! One piecee fine bizness."
Then, abruptly, Ping had a swift, paralyzing thought.
"Mebbyso Melican men makee chase fo' McGloly and Ping, huh?" he cried. "Plaps we lun, ketchee Matt, no lettee Melican men ketchee us?"
"Oh, shucks, Ping!" exclaimed McGlory disgustedly. "When you forget yourself, now and then, and do a particularly bright thing, you spoil it all by some break of that sort. Those punchers don't know where we're going! And what sort of a trail are we leaving?" The cowboy turned and looked back over the ground they had covered. "All buffalo grass," he finished, "and the Tin Cup outfit couldn't run us down in a thousand years."
But Ping's fears persisted, in spite of McGlory's attempt to smother them.
"My no likee," he quavered, pausing again and again to look back as they traveled. "Mebbyso they ketchee, they takee scalp. My no likee. Losee pigtail, no go back to China ally mo'."
"Well, well, don't blubber about it!" exclaimed McGlory. "You'll keep the pigtail, all right, though what in Sam Hill it's good for is more than I know. Buck up, step high, wide, and handsome, and don't lose so much time looking around. Just stow it away in your mind, Ping, that every step on the trail to the river brings us that much closer to Pard Matt."