Kilrain and Nash glowered at him a moment, and then backed through the door.

As they hurried for the barn Kilrain asked:  “What makes the chief act soft to that hell-raiser?”

“If you have a feller cut out for your own meat,” answered Nash, “d’you want to have any one else step in and take your meal away?”

“But you and me, Steve, we’ll get this bird.”

“We’ll get Glendin behind us first.”

“Why him?”

“Play safe.  Glendin can swear us in as deputies to—­’apprehend,’ as he calls it, this Bard.  Apprehendin’ a feller like Bard simply means to shoot him down and ask him to come along afterward, see?”

“Nash, you got a great head.  You ought to be one of these lawyers.  There ain’t nothin’ you can’t find a way out of.  But will Glendin do it?”

“He’ll do what I ask him to do.”

“Friend of yours?”

“Better’n a friend.”

“Got something on him?”

“These here questions, they ain’t polite, Shorty,” grinned Nash.

“All right.  You do the leadin’ in this game and I’ll jest follow suit.  But lay your course with nothin’ but the tops’ls flyin’, because I’ve got an idea we’re goin’ to hit a hell of a storm before we get back to port, Steve.”

“For my part,” answered Nash, “I’m gettin’ used to rough weather.”

They saddled their horses and cut across the hills straight for Eldara.  Kilrain spurred viciously, and the roan had hard work keeping up.

“Hold in,” called Nash after a time.  “Save your hoss, Shorty.  This ain’t no short trail.  D’you notice the hosses when we was in the barn?”

“Nope.”

“Bard took Duffy’s grey, and the grey can go like the devil.  Hoss-liftin’?  That’s another little mark on Bard’s score.”

CHAPTER XXXII

TO “APPREHEND” A MAN

As if to make up for its silence of the blast when the two reached it late the night before, Eldara was going full that evening.  Kilrain went straight for Doc Young, to bring him later to join Nash at the house of Deputy Glendin.

The front of the deputy’s house was utterly dark, but Nash, unabashed, knocked loudly on the door, and went immediately to the rear of the place.  He was in time to see a light wink out at an upper window of the two-story shack.  He slipped back, chuckling, among the trees, and waited until the back door slammed and a dark figure ran noiselessly down the steps and out into the night.  Then he returned, still chuckling, to the front of the house, and banged again on the door.

A window above him raised at length and a drawling voice, apparently overcome with sleep, called down:  “What’s up in Eldara?”

Nash answered:  “Everything’s wrong.  Deputy Glendin, he sits up in a back room playin’ poker and hittin’ the redeye.  No wonder Eldara’s goin’ to hell!”

A muffled cursing rolled down to the cowpuncher, and then a sharp challenge:  “Who’s there?”