ad, the perpendicular
walls of the great canyon gave back a little, and looking past the
water-boy guide, Ballard saw an opening marking the entrance of a small
tributary stream from the north; a little green oasis in the vast desert
of frowning cliffs and tumbled boulders, with a log cabin and a tiny
corral nestling under the portal rock of the smaller stream.

"Hello!" said Bigelow, breaking the silence in which they had been
riding for the greater part of the three hours, "what's this we are
coming to?"

Ballard was about to pass the query on to the boy when an armed man in
the flapped hat and overalls of a range rider stepped from behind a
boulder and barred the way. There was a halt, an exchange of words
between young Carson and the flap-hatted trail-watcher in tones so low
as to be inaudible to the others, and the armed one faced about, rather
reluctantly, it seemed, to lead the way to the cabin under the cliff.

At the dismounting before the cabin door, the boy cleared away a little
of the mystery.

"This yere is whar I live when I'm at home," he drawled, lapsing by the
influence of the propinquity into the Tennessee idiom which was his
birthright. "Pap'll get ye your breakfas' while I'm feedin' the
bronc's."

Ballard glanced quickly at his guest and met the return glance of
complete intelligence in the steady gray eyes of the Forestry man. The
cabin and the corral in the secluded canyon were sufficiently accounted
for. But one use could be made of a stock enclosure in such an
inaccessible mountain fastness. The trail station in the heart of the
Boiling Water wilderness was doubtless the headquarters of the
"rustlers" who lived by preying upon the King of Arcadia's flocks and
herds.

"Your allies in the little war against Colonel Craigmiles," said
Bigelow, and there was something like a touch of mild reproach in his
low tone when he added: "Misery isn't the only thing that 'acquaints a
man with strange bedfellows.'"

"Apparently not," said Ballard; and they went together into the kitchen
half of the cabin which was built, in true Tennessee fashion, as "two
pens and a passage."

The welcome accorded them by the sullen-faced man who was already frying
rashers of bacon over the open fire on the hearth was not especially
cordial. "Mek' ye an arm and re'ch for yerselves," was his sole phrase
of hospitality, when the bacon and pan-bread were smoking on the huge
hewn slab which served for a table; and he neit