Ed Banks, by hard riding, got to the crossing at five o'clock, and told Baggs of the hold-up and the shooting of Oliver Sollers. The news stirred the old engineman, and his excitement threw him off his guard. Banks rode straight on for the middle pass, leaving word that two of his men would be along within half an hour to watch the pass and the ranch crossing, and asking Baggs to put up some kind of a fight for the crossing until more of the _posse_ came up--at the least, to make sure that nobody got any fresh horses. The boy was cooking supper in the kitchen, and Baggs had done his milking and gone back to the corral, when two men rode around the corner of the barn and asked if they could get something to eat. Poor Baggs sold his life in six words: "Why, yes; be you Banks's men?" Du Sang answered: "No; we're from Sheriff Coon's office at Oroville, looking up a bunch of Duck Bar steers that's been run somewhere up Deep Creek. Can we stay here all night?" They dismounted and disarmed Baggs's suspicions, though the condition of their horses might have warned him had he had his senses. The unfortunate man had probably fixed it in his mind that a ride from Tower W to Deep Creek in sixteen hours was a physical impossibility. "Stay here? Sure! I want you to stay," said Baggs bluffly. "Looks to me like I seen you down at Crawling Stone, ain't I?" he asked of Karg. Karg was lighting a cigarette. "I used to mark at the Dunning ranch," he answered, throwing away his match. "That's hit. Good! The boy's cooking supper. Step up to the kitchen and tell him to cut ham for four more." "Four?" "Two of Ed Banks's men will be here by six o'clock. Heard about the hold-up? They stopped Number Three at Tower W last night and shot Ollie Sollers, as white a boy as ever pulled a throttle. Boys, a man that'll kill a locomotive engineer is worse'n an Indian; I'd help skin him." "The hell you would!" cried Du Sang. "Well, don't you want to start in on me? I killed Sollers. Look at me; ain't I handsome? What you going to do about it?"