This was the situation a little later when the main body of the
rustlers, ten men strong, ambled unsuspectingly into the valley-mouth
trap: dust in the air, a withdrawing thunder of hoof-beats, and apparent
desertion of the point of hazard. Carson was the first to grasp the
meaning of the dust cloud and the vanishing murmur of hoof-tramplings.

"Hell!" he rasped. "Billings has let 'em cut back up the gulch! That's
on you, Buck Cummin's: I told you ye'd better hike along 'ith Billings."

"You always _was_ one o' them 'I-told-ye-so' kind of liars," was the
pessimistic retort of the man called Cummings; and Carson's right hand
was flicking toward the ready pistol butt when a voice out of the
shadows under the western cliff shaped a command clear-cut and incisive.

"Hands up out there--every man of you!" Then, by way of charitable
explanation: "You're covered--with a rapid-fire Maxim."

There were doubters among the ten; desperate men whose lawless days and
nights were filled with hair's-breadth chance-takings. From these came a
scattering volley of pistol shots spitting viciously at the cliff
shadows.

"Show 'em, Jerry," said the voice, curtly; and from the shelter of a
great boulder at the side of the main trail leaped a sheet of flame with
a roar comparable to nothing on earth save its ear-splitting,
nerve-shattering self. Blacklock had swept the machine-gun in a short
arc over the heads of the cattle thieves, and from the cliff face and
ledges above them a dropping rain of clipped pine branches and
splintered rock chippings fell upon the trapped ten.

It is the new and untried that terrifies. In the group of rustlers there
were men who would have wheeled horse and run a gauntlet of spitting
Winchesters without a moment's hesitation. But this hidden
murder-machine belching whole regiment volleys out of the shadows....
"Sojers, by cripes!" muttered Carson, under his breath. Then aloud: "All
right, Cap'n; what you say goes as it lays."

"I said 'hands up,' and I meant it," rasped Ballard; and when the pale
moonlight pricked out the cattle-lifters in the attitude of submission:
"First man on the right--knee your horse into the clump of trees
straight ahead of you."

It was Fitzpatrick, working swiftly and alone, who disarmed,
wrist-roped, and heel-tied to his horse each of the crestfallen ones as
Ballard ordered them singly into the mysterious shadows of the pine
grove. Six of the ten, including Carson, had been gro