“We’ve had your hoss brought in,” said Swingley briefly. “Saddle quick and come on with us.”

Without any questions Bertram saddled his horse. The three men mounted and rode out of camp silently. As soon as they struck the road Swingley and Tom Hoog took the lead, Bertram riding close behind them at an easy gallop. Nothing was heard for an hour or more but the pounding of hoofs on the hard road. Then Swingley and Hoog turned in at a long, one-story building, which was set a short distance back from the road. Bertram followed, and the three men dismounted.

Swingley and Hoog, dropping their reins, entered the wide doorway of the building. After they had lighted two lanterns, that were bracketed in the wall, Bertram saw that the place was a fairly well-equipped blacksmith shop. There was a pile of old horseshoes in one corner, and in another was considerable farm machinery of various sorts.

“Can you take something out of that pile of junk and make up a sort of fort on wheels?” asked Swingley of Bertram. “I might as well tell you that we’re goin’ right on to Wild Horse, the county seat, forty mile from here. Before we reach the town we may have to do some purty stiff fightin’, and I figger that somethin’ armored may come in handy. Old Jim, the blacksmith, was outlinin’ somethin’ that he had in his head—a kind of go-devil on wheels he called it—but now he is useless, and I want you to help me out.”

Bertram showed no surprise. In fact no development of this strange adventure, in which he found himself cast, could surprise him. He looked the pile of machinery over carefully.

“There are the wheels and frame of a hayrake,” said Hoog. “And there are a couple of road scrapers. Take the bottoms of those scrapers and fasten them to the hayrake frame, and you’ve got something that you could walk right up to a nest of rifles with. Ain’t that right, Bertram?”

The young Texan nodded. “I reckon it might work out that way,” he replied, “but I didn’t know that you were accustomed to getting your men from behind things like that, Hoog.”

The gunman darted a murderous glance at Bertram, and his hands moved toward his hips, but Swingley stepped quickly between the two men.

“Hyar! No fussin’!” he commanded. “We ain’t got more’n two hours start of the gang, and we’ll have to work fast. Let’s have that go-devil fixed ’fore the boys git here.”

Bertram 

 Prev. P 13/54 next