ind them, and to whom rifle fire was a
familiar argument. By the fashion in which they handled their weapons,
Roger saw they were hunters; and the grim way in which they kept watch
proved that they had come expecting a fight; to shoot and be shot at;
to kill and perhaps be killed.

"That's Garman's work; no one else could get that crowd out of the
swamp. How did it happen, Hig?"

"It happened because I'm all bone from the neck up. They used an old
trick, and I fell into the trap like a tenderfoot. A few of them came
hollering and shooting out of Flower Prairie, stampeding the boys. I
figured it to be a raid on the camp, and I hollered for Blease and we
ran for the tents. They played the bluff strong. Steamboat Bill got
it through the head while he was running for cover--you remember him,
the big, black fellow with earrings. Then they threw some lead into
the tents, and Blease and I had quite a time holding 'em off. Blease
got one of 'em; saw them carrying him away too dead to skin. Then we
heard three quick shots, repeated three times down on the muck lands,
and the shooting up here quit _pronto_.

"After a while it got through my thick head what had happened. Blease
and I took in on the gallop back toward the ditches, but we were too
late. They'd jumped it already, a whole army of 'em, and real hard
_hombres_. Shoot?" He held out his perforated sun helmet. "I pushed
that up on the stick for an experiment, and the guy that drilled it was
two hundred yards away."

"It was my fault," said Payne. "Garman was too smart for me. I played
right into his hand by going down there. He knew that's what I'd do,
and he had this gang waiting and shot them over here as soon as he saw
me coming."

"That isn't all," continued Higgins. "As soon as the boys saw
Steamboat Bill run against his bad luck they left the job and ran for
the brush like rabbits. Blease says they won't come back; they always
make tracks when white men start shooting."

"You mean there's only two of us here now?"

"Three. Old Blease has put on the war paint."

"Three isn't enough."

"Not by a dozen, it isn't. Did you learn what they're trying to do to
you?"

"They're trying to beat me out of the land by fixing up a false title.
Now they've got possession, and their scheme is to carry me from court
to court till I'm busted and tired out."

As he spoke he realized fully what this meant. Garman's wealth and
influence and the pomp a