eplied the doctor without a ripple of
excitement; "but I was brought up with four mules."

Without another word Smith stood on the footboard, and Dr. Slavens slid
along to his place. Smith handed the physician the lines and took the
big revolver from its pocket by the seat.

"Two fellers on horseback," said he, keeping his eyes sharply on the
boulder-hedged road, "has been dodgin' along the top of that ridge kind
of suspicious. No reason why any honest man would want to ride along up
there among the rocks when he could ride down here where it's smooth.
They may be straight or they may be crooked. I don't know. But you meet
all kinds along this road."

The doctor nodded. Smith said no more, but stood, one knee on the seat,
with his pistol held in readiness for instant action. When they reached
the top of the ridge nobody was in sight, but there were boulders
enough, and big enough, on every hand to conceal an army. Smith nodded;
the doctor pulled up.

The stage had no sooner stopped than Walker was out, his pistol in hand,
ready to show June and all her female relatives so dear that he was
there to stand between them and danger as long as their peril might
last.

Smith looked around carefully.

"Funny about them two fellers!" he muttered.

From the inside of the stage came June's voice, raised in admiration of
Mr. Walker's intrepidity, and her mother's voice, commanding her to be
silent, and not draw down upon them the fury of the bandits, who even
then might be taking aim at them from behind a rock.

Nobody appearing, between whom and June he might precipitate himself,
Walker mounted a rock for a look around. He had no more than reached the
top when the two horsemen who had caused the flurry rode from behind the
house-size boulder which had hidden them, turned their backs, crouching
in their saddles as if to hide their identity, and galloped off.

"Huh! Old Hun Shanklin's one of 'em," sniffed Smith, plainly disgusted
that the affair had turned out so poorly.

He put his weapon back in its place and took the lines.

"And that feller, he don't have to go around holdin' people up with a
gun in his hand," he added. "He's got a safer and surer game of it than
that."

"And that's no cross-eyed view of it, either," Dr. Slavens agreed.

Walker came over and stood beside the near wheel.

"One of them was Hun Shanklin!" said he, whispering up loudly for the
doctor's ear, a look of deep concern on his youthful fac