ld only by the ring caught over
the little hook at the back of the seat and had whipped out his own big
ugly revolver. His eyes ran this way and that; in his soul he knew well
enough that no mere bit of chance had thrown the obstruction across his
way. But never a head nor an arm nor a rifle barrel rewarded his look.
Until, suddenly, heralded by a curt shouted command, a man rode out into
the open road from the mouth of a canon.

"Don't be a fool, Smith! Take a little look-around first!"

It was a voice eminently cool and steady and insolent. Though his gun
rose slowly Hap Smith heeded the note of arrogance and, with a hard
finger crooking to the trigger, looked about him again. And this time
not in vain. Yonder, from across the top of a boulder, a rifle barrel
bore unwaveringly upon the breadth of his chest; ten feet higher up on
the mountainside where there was a pile of granite rocks and a handful
of scrub brush, a second rifle gave its sinister silent warning; two
other guns looked forth from the other side of the road ... in all, at
least five armed men....

Hap Smith's eyes went back to the man sitting his horse in the middle of
the road, just across the fallen pine tree. A tall, powerfully built man
dressed quite as Hap Smith and the guard had been told to expect: black,
shaggy chaps, grey shirt and neck-handkerchief; broad black hat; red
bandana across his face with wide slits for the eyes. And yet both of
the men in the stage stared and were on the verge of uncertainty; had
they not been prepared both would have sworn that it was Buck Thornton
on Buck Thornton's horse; and later they would, no doubt, have sworn to
Buck Thornton's saddle.

Five to two, seemed the odds, with all of the highwaymen saving the one
bold figure screened from view and so holding the advantage of position.
And yet, for once, the odds were not what they seemed.

For now there came abruptly, and utterly with no sign of warning, the
answer to the last big play of Ben Broderick and Henry Pollard and the
rest. Into the road out of the same canon from which the masked man on
the horse had come now rode two more men, side by side and with a
thunderous racket of pounding hoofs beating at rocky soil, their heads
up, their faces unhidden, their eyes hard and bright and their right
hands lifted a little. Two-Hand Billy Comstock and Buck Thornton, come
at the top speed of a swinging gallop to alter the odds and take a hand.
And as Thornton's h