"Pardon _my_ frankness--" Pape, too, could feign politeness--"but this trouble does concern me in the greatest. I hate being in your debt. I feel I should take this chance to pay and save you!"
Although the Colt still held his gaze, the jurist put the question with manifest relief. Argument was his stock in profession--perhaps he hoped from that.
Pape couldn't restrain an out-loud chuckle, so near did he seem to the consummation of his promises to Jane. "Just you hand over Granddad Lauderdale's crypt and those _carte_-blank permits and I'll save you from being your own lawyer defending a charge of before-and-after burglary. Urge 'em upon me, judge, then call off your crew and vamoose pronto--which is roof-of-America for get out quick yourself."
Allen sent a glance of appeal among his hirelings, but elicited no response. To them there was, in truth, a stronger appeal in the careless way the Westerner handled his "hardware." They looked to be gunmen themselves, but of the metropolitan sort that shoot singly from behind or in concert before. Certain was it that some one would get punctured did the revolver speak and each was concerned lest he be the ill-fated human "tire."
Allen seemed left to his own devices. Crumpling the cryptic sheet in one hand, he started slowly forward. Pape lifted his foot for a stride along the cart-side. But some time elapsed before the sole of his boot again met mother earth. With the suddenness of most successful attacks on a rear guarded over-confidently, the one leg which, for the moment, supported his weight was jerked from under with a violence that pitched him face forward.
As he fell his revolver exclaimed, but only an indignant monosyllable. A veritable avalanche of humanity descended upon him, hard in effect as the rocky ground in their attack with gun butts and fists. For a second time he had miscalculated odds; seemed at last to have met defeat. In the act, as it were, of seizing the Sturgis' loot, he was put out by a blow from a leather black-jack brought down upon his defenseless head by an expert hand.
Some minutes must have passed before his brain again functioned. In the interim he had been "hogtied," despite the fact that, literally, the knots were not tied according to the Hoyle of the range. The first thing he noticed on opening his eyes was that Judge Allen had been stripped of his coat and the left sleeves of his outer and under shirts cut away to give place to a bandage. Evidently his instinctive pull on the trigger had sent a bullet into his preferred target, although lack of aim had made it a wing shot.