“They’re strangers, King,” he said, shortly to the horse as the latter fled headlong down the gully toward the point from which he had started; “Davies and Harris wouldn’t leave the herd with that norther coming on.”

The big horse made fast time down the gully.  He brought Lawler to a point near the fence where it crossed the gully at about the instant the two riders were dismounting some distance away.

Lawler rode out of the gully and brought Red King to a halt.  There was no danger that the two men would discover him, for all objects in the vicinity were rapidly being blotted out by the dancing smother of dust that was riding the north wind.  Lawler was to the north of the men, slightly eastward, and they could not have faced the smother of dust to look toward him.

Lawler could dimly see the herd moving toward the fence; he could see the men plainly; and as he watched them his eyes narrowed.  The big horse leaped with the word he caught from his rider’s lips, racing lightly with the wind toward the fence where the men were working.

Lawler’s approach was noiseless, for all sound was engulfed in the steady, roaring whine of the storm.  Neither of the two men, working at the fence, heard Lawler as he brought the big horse to a halt within half a dozen paces of them.

The taller of the two, plying a pair of wire-nippers, completed his work at a fence post and turned to leap toward another.  The movement brought him against the muzzle of Lawler’s horse.  He halted jerkily, retreated a step, and looked up, to see Lawler looking at him from behind the muzzle of the big pistol that had leaped into his hand.

There was no word spoken—­none could be heard at the moment.  What followed was grim pantomime, with tragedy lurking near.

The tall man held his position.  He had tentatively extended his right hand, the fingers spread, clawlike.  Now the hand was going upward, accompanied by the other.  When the man had stepped backward to escape a collision with Lawler’s horse, the wind had whipped his hat from his head.  He now stood there, his hair waving to the vicious whims of the gale, veiling his eyes and he not daring to lower his hands to brush it away.

The shorter man, too, had assumed a statuesque pose.  He had turned when he had noted his companion’s startled movement, and he, too, had seen an apparition that had sent his hands swiftly upward.

The big horse stood motionless, his back to the wind.  He did not move as Lawler leaped from his back—­smoothly, quickly, his eyes alert, his muscles tensed for violent action.

The men stood rigid while Lawler jerked their pistols from their holsters and tossed them into the dust waves that danced and swirled around them.  The short man was catapulted against the tall one with a viciousness that staggered both; and then they heard Lawler’s voice, sharp and penetrating, above the shrieking of the wind: