of his saddle as if he had found
a stomach-ache in the breathless gallop. But he was merely listening.

"I ain't reskin' any money on it," he qualified. "If them cow-punch's
've caught on to where you're goin', and what you're goin' _fer_----"

Out of the stillness filling the hill-gorge like a black sea of silence
came a measured thudding of hoofs and an unmistakable squeaking of
saddle leather. Like a flash the boy was afoot and reaching under his
bronco's belly for a tripping hold on the horse's forefoot. "Down! and
pitch the cayuses!" he quavered stridently; and as the three horses
rolled in the dry sand of the arroyo bed with their late riders
flattened upon their heads, the inner darkness of the gorge spat fire
and there was a fine singing whine of bullets overhead.

XII

THE RUSTLERS

In defiance of all the laws of precedence, it was the guest who first
rose to the demands of the spiteful occasion. While Ballard was still
struggling with the holster strappings of his rifle, Bigelow had
disengaged his weapon and was industriously pumping a rapid-fire volley
into the flame-spitting darkness of the gorge.

The effect of the prompt reply in kind was quickly made manifest. The
firing ceased as abruptly as it had begun, a riderless horse dashed
snorting down the bed of the dry arroyo, narrowly missing a stumbling
collision with the living obstructions lying in his way, and other
gallopings were heard withdrawing into the hill-shadowed obscurities.

It was Ballard who took the water-boy to task when they had waited long
enough to be measurably certain that the attackers had left the field.

"You were mistaken, Dick," he said, breaking the strained silence.
"There were more than two of them."

Young Carson was getting his horse up, and he appeared to be curiously
at fault.

"You're plumb right, Cap'n Ballard," he admitted. "But that ain't what's
pinchin' me: there's always enough of 'em night-herdin' this end of the
range so 'at they could have picked up another hand 'r two. What I
cayn't tumble to is how they-all out-rid us."

"To get ahead of us, you mean?"

"That's it. We're in the neck of a little hogback draw that goes on down
to the big canyon. The only other trail into the draw is along by the
river and up this-a-way--'bout a mile and a half furder 'n the road we
come, I reckon."

It was the persistent element of mystery once more thrusting itself into
the prosaic field of the industries; b