've got to get that guy before dark, Tom, or he'll slip us."

"All right," replied Stone, "get him."

CHAPTER XVI

THE GO-DEVIL

"I want a wagon," scowled Van Horn. "There's one down at Gorman's
place he won't need any more. There's some baled hay down there, too.
Take the men you need, load what hay you can find on the wagon and
hustle it up here."

Too stubborn to ask questions, and only starting after many hard
words--with which all the ground of the morning quarrel and much more
was traversed--Stone took two men and started reluctantly for Gorman's.
He spent a long time on his job, but came back as directed with the
wagon loaded with hay.

The wagon was not much to view. It looked like the wagon of a man that
spent more time in Sleepy Cat saloons than on his ranch. A rack,
equally old and dilapidated, had been set on the running gear. The
paint had long since blown off the wheels, and one of these, a front
wheel, had lost a tire on the rough trip up the creek. But the felloes
hung to the spokes and the spokes to the hub.

Van Horn inspected the outfit grimly. With half a dozen men he set
quickly to work and under his resourceful ingenuity the wagon and hay
were speedily turned into what would now-a-days be termed a tank. Only
lack of hay kept him from making a mobile fortress of it. By means of
wire he slung along the sides what baled hay he could spare, and with
much effort to avoid exposure the armored wagon was dragged over the
roughest kind of ground, to the north and west of the cabin. From this
direction the ground, fairly smooth, sloped from a ridge fringed by
jutting patches of rock, directly toward the cabin itself and eager
hands made the final preparations to smoke Henry out. With the load of
hay set ablaze and the wagon run down against the cabin the defender
was bound to be driven from cover or burnt.

When the bustling, contradicting and confusion finally subsided, the
wagon was stealthily pushed over the ridge, the hay fired and the
blazing outfit, christened a go-devil, was started with a shout down
the slope.

If there existed in the minds of those that talked least a lingering
suspicion that Dutch Henry was still alive it was soon strongly
justified. Before the wagon had rolled twenty feet the challenge of a
rifle-shot from the cabin answered the attack. Everybody dodged quick,
but no one was hit and a yell of derision rose from behind the rocks.
With ropes, borrowed