he
looked about the place. It readily lent itself well to fortification,
and advantage had been taken of this by Mr. Merkel. The rough shack
was an outpost fort in the land that was destined to be battled for by
the sheep men on one side and the cattle men on the other.

Quiet evening was settling down, "grub" had been served and the ponies
were rubbing noses in the improvised corral when Yellin' Kid, who was
venturing to walk around a little to "exercise his game leg," as he
expressed it, came to a halt and gazed earnestly across Spur Creek in
the direction of Mexico distant several miles.

"What is it, Kid?" asked Billee, who was smoking his pipe.

"Somebody's comin'," was the answer, "an' he's sweatin' leather," which
meant that he was riding fast.

The boy ranchers looked in the direction indicated. A lone horseman
was approaching from the side of the creek where the enemy might be
expected first to appear.

CHAPTER VI

THE ALARM

Gathered in front of their "fort," as it laughingly had been
christened, the boy ranchers and their cow puncher comrades watched the
approach of the lone horseman. He had come up through the valley--the
pass that, like the neck of a bag tied about the middle with a string,
connected two great lands--Mexico and the United States. But one land
represented law and order to a degree, while the other was woefully
lacking in these essentials to progress.

For a time the stranger rode on at the fast pace Yellin' Kid had at
first observed, and the atmosphere was so clear that his progress was
easily noticed without glasses, though Bud brought out a pair after a
moment or two.

Then, suddenly, the approaching horseman seemed to become aware, for
the first time, of the new structure at Spur Creek--the "fort" of
Diamond X.

For he began to slacken his pace and when a quarter of a mile from the
place where Mr. Merkel had determined to make a stand, the horseman
pulled up his steed. Then he sat in the saddle and gazed long and
earnestly at the shack and those who stood grouped in front of it.

"Look out!" suddenly cried Bud, who was watching the horseman through
the glasses. "He's going to draw!"

This meant gun play, and the cowboys realized this, for they lost no
time in "ducking" behind shelter. Bud, too, was taking no chances, but
as he continued to look, from a vantage point, he said:

"I made a mistake. He's only using glasses, same as I am. He didn't
pull a gun.