"What do you want rushin' around here with them fool guns that way?" Mrs. Ellison inquired, indignantly severe, entirely cool, taking in every detail of the rude trespass.
"We're the sheriff's posse, we're after the horse that man in there behind you stole from Sid Coburn last night," the lanky leader replied.
One of them already had grabbed up the saddle and was cutting loose the bulky roll done up in the slicker. He dumped the contents of the sack on the porch as Eudora came running ahead of the fellow who was leading her horse.
"Look-a here!" said the man who had dumped the sack's contents. He was holding up the little handbag that Simpson had seen the cowman carrying around.
Simpson pushed past Mrs. Ellison, deliberate and unflurried, although he was raging inwardly at the high-handed robbery he knew it to be, still as innocent of the little brown bag's contents as Mrs. Ellison.
"What're you up to, you bloomin' pirates?" he asked, head up, chin out, eyes as steady as if he challenged a pack of thieving boys instead of four night-riding scoundrels with guns in their fists.
"Back up, and stay backed, little feller," the chief of the party said, boring the muzzle of his gun against that part of Simpson's anatomy which lately had become the receptacle of ham and eggs.
One of the others stopped Eudora on the steps; another edged around behind Mrs. Ellison and cut her off from the door.
"Stay right where you're at, children," the tall fellow
