“That’s good.  These little precautions are mighty necessary in a close fight.  Those folks over at Shonoho Inn ought to have thought of this outer-guard business for themselves, but it seems they didn’t.  They’d be right awkwardly embarrassed if some fellow they don’t want to see should slip in on ’em without notice.  While I think of it, don’t fail to keep me posted on what Canby sees after I go back to town.  He thinks he’s safe, does he?”

“Perfectly.  Nobody can see his dugout from the road, and his oil-heater doesn’t make any smoke.  That scheme of laying insulated wires on the ground works like a charm.  You could walk all over them without noticing them.”  The young man was opening the door as he spoke, and he broke off suddenly to say:  “That’s his call ringing now.  Would you like to come and talk to him?”

“No; you can tell me what he says, if it’s worth telling.”

The clerk disappeared into the room of the tapping noises, but he was back again almost immediately.

“It was Canby,” he said hurriedly.  “He says two men on horseback have just dragged a good-sized pine-tree down the Shonoho road and are placing it across the county road.  He can’t see the men’s faces very well, but he thinks the bigger of the two is Jack Barto.”

It was the senator’s boast that he had never lost a tooth or had one filled, and his smile showed the double row, strong and evenly matched, under the drooping grayish mustaches.

“That boy Canby is a mighty good guesser, Fred. I shouldn’t be surprised if the fellow he has spotted is Jack Barto, sure enough.  If you didn’t know beforehand what a good-natured, meechin’ sort of rooster Jack is, you might think he was fixing to play some kind of a hold-up game on somebody.”

“That’s what Canby thinks, and he asked me to hold the wire open.”

The big boss smiled again.  “Then don’t you reckon you’d better go and hold it?” he suggested mildly; and the young man in his shirt-sleeves vanished to do it.

When he was left alone, the senator went to the house phone connecting the library with the remoter suites.  A touch of the button brought an answering word, and he spoke softly into the transmitter.

“The time is getting right ripe, and I thought you might want a minute or so to put on your things,” he said, in answer to the low-toned “Well?” that came over the house wire.  Then he added:  “I don’t know but what we may have to make a little bluff at somebody on the way in.  When you order the car around, suppose you tell Rickert to put ‘Tennessee’ and Billy Shack in the tonneau, with a couple of shot-guns.  We can drop ’em if they look too warlike and conspicuous.”

He was hanging the ear-piece on its hook when the shirt-sleeved young man burst in again excitedly.

“It is a hold-up!” he declared breathlessly.  “Miss Anners and Mr. Evan have slammed their car into the tree, and Canby says the two horseback men are watching them from the dry gulch just below him!”