"I don't. I'm from the East."
"They'll run it over you, bluff you off the map, take any advantage they can."
"Will they fight?"
"They'll burn powder quick if they get the drop on you."
"What are they like?"
The Texan considered. "One is a tall, red-headed guy; the other's a sawed-off, hammered-down little runt--but gunmen, both of 'em, or I'm a liar."
"They would probably follow me," said the messenger, worried.
"You better believe they will, soon as they hear you've gone."
Arthur kicked a little hole in the ground with the toe of his shoe. What had he better do? He could stay at the fort, of course, and appeal to Major Ponsford for help. But if he did, he would probably be late for his appointment with Wadley. It happened that the cattleman and the army officer had had a sharp difference of opinion about the merits of the herd that had been delivered, and it was not at all likely that Ponsford would give him a military guard to Tascosa. Moreover, he had a feeling that the owner of the A T O would resent any call to the soldiers for assistance. Clint Wadley usually played his own hand, and he expected the same of his men.
But the habit of young Ridley's life had not made for fitness to cope with a frontier emergency. Nor was he of stiff enough clay to fight free of his difficulty without help.
"What about you?" he asked the other man. "Can I hire you to ride with me to Tascosa?"
"As a tenderfoot-wrangler?" sneered the Texan.
Arthur flushed. "I've never been there. I don't know the way."
"You follow a gun-barrel road from the fort. But I'll ride with you--if the pay is right."
"What do you say to twenty dollars for the trip?"
"You've hired me."
"And if we're attacked?"
"I pack a six-shooter."
The troubled young man looked into the hard, reckless face of this stranger who had gone out of his way to warn him of the impending attack. No certificate was necessary to tell him that this man would fight.
"I don't know your name," said Ridley, still hesitating.
"Any more than I know yours," returned the other. "Call me Bill Moore, an' I'll be on hand to eat my share of the chuck."
"We'd better leave at once, don't you think?"
"You're the doc. Meet you here in an hour ready for the trail."
The man who called himself Bill Moore went his uncertain way down the street. To the casual eye he was far gone in drink. Young Ridley went straight to the corral where he had put up his horse. He watered and fed the animal, and after an endless half-hour saddled the bronco.