Square Deal Sanderson | Page 3

later he saw the first rider appear for a moment on the sky line, vanish, reappear for an instant, only to be followed within a few minutes by the figures of the other men.
Sanderson was closing up the space that separated him from the two men, and by that medium he knew they were not traveling rapidly, for the brown horse was loping slowly. Thus he knew that the first man was not yet aware that he was being followed.
But some time later to Sanderson's ears was borne the faint, muffled report of a firearm, and he smiled solemnly.
"That first guy will know, now," he told himself. Sanderson kept steadily on. In half an hour he heard half a dozen rifle reports in quick succession, He could see the smoke puffs of the weapons, and he knew the pursuit was over.
The second riders had brought the first to bay in a section of broken country featured by small, rock-strewn hills. By watching the smoke balloon upward, Sanderson could determine the location of the men.
It seemed to Sanderson that the two had separated, one swinging westward and the other eastward, in an endeavor to render hazardous any concealment the other might find. It was the old game of getting an enemy between two fires, and Sanderson's lips curved with an appreciative grin as he noted the fact.
"Old-timers," he said.
It was not Sanderson's affair. He told himself that many times as he rode slowly forward. To his knowledge the country was cursed with too many men of the type the two appeared to be; and as he had no doubt that the other man was of that type also, they would be doing the country a service were they to annihilate one another.
Sanderson, though, despite his conviction, felt a pulse of sympathy for the first rider. It was that emotion which impelled him to keep going cautiously forward when, by all the rules of life in that country, he should have stood at a distance to allow the men to fight it out among themselves.
Sanderson's interest grew as the fight progressed. When he had approached as far as he safely could without endangering his own life and that of Streak, he dismounted at the bottom of a small hill, trailed the reins over Streak's head and, carrying his rifle, made his way stealthily to the crest of the hill. There, concealed behind an irregularly shaped boulder, he peered at the combatants.
He had heard several reports while dismounting and ascending the hill, and by the time he looked over the crest he saw that the battle was over. He saw the three men grouped about a cluster of rocks on a hill not more than a hundred yards distant. Two of the men were bending over the third, who was stretched out on his back, motionless. It appeared to Sanderson that the two men were searching the pockets of the other, for they were fumbling at the other's clothing and, seemingly, putting something into their own pockets.
Sanderson scowled. Now that the fight was over, he was at liberty to investigate; the ethics of life in the country did not forbid that--though many men had found it as dangerous as interference.
Sanderson stood up, within full view of the two men, and hailed them.
"What's bitin' you guys?" he said.
The two men wheeled, facing Sanderson. The latter's answer came in the shape of a rifle bullet, the weapon fired from the hip of one of the men--a snapshot.
Sanderson had observed the movement almost as soon as it had begun, and he threw himself head-long behind the shelter of the rock at his side as the bullet droned over his head.
If Sanderson had entertained any thought of the two men being representatives of the law, trailing a wrongdoer, that thought would have been dispelled by the action of the men in shooting at him. He was now certain the men were what he had taken them to be, and he grinned felinely as he squirmed around until he got into a position from which he could see them. But when he did get into position the men had vanished.
However, Sanderson was not misled. He knew they had secreted themselves behind some of the rocks in the vicinity, no doubt to wait a reasonable time before endeavoring to discover whether the bullet had accomplished its sinister object.
Sanderson's grin grew broader. He had the men at a disadvantage. Their horses, he had observed before calling to them, were in a little depression at the right--and entirely out of reach of the men.
To get to them they would have to expose themselves on an open stretch between the spot where the horses were concealed and the hill on which they were secreted, and on the open stretch they would be