Then we'll slip past the sentries without being
seen. I'd hate to spoil any of them if we can help it. We're
liable to get ourselves disliked if our guns spatter too much."
They rode through the main street, still noisy with the shouts of
late revelers returning to their quarters. Masked men were yet in
evidence occasionally, so that their habits caused neither remark
nor suspicion. A good many of the punchers, unable to stay
longer, were slipping out of town after having made a night of
it. In the general exodus the two friends hoped to escape
unobserved.
They dropped into a side street, galloped down it for two hundred
yards, and dismounted at a barb-wire fence which ran parallel
with the road. The foreman's wire-clippers severed the strands
one by one, and they led their horses through the gap. They
crossed an alfalfa-field, jumped an irrigation ditch, used the
clippers again, and found themselves in a large pasture. It was
getting lighter every moment, and while they were still in the
pasture a voice hailed them from the road in an unmistakable
command to halt.
They bent low over the backs of their ponies and gave them the
spur. The shot they had expected rang out, passing harmlessly
over them.
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