the canyon
where the outlaws were said to be in hiding. The riding was fair, so I
made good time on the trail and got to the entrance of the canyon about
the middle of the day. A few hundred feet from the fork of the stream I
came to a little log cabin, occupied by a miner and his family. I took
lunch with them and told them my errand. Both the man and his wife
begged me not to go up to the camp alone, as they had heard the
tie-cutters threaten to kill at sight any stranger found on their land."

"Why didn't you propose that the miner should go up to the camp with
you?"

"I did. But he remarked that up to date he had succeeded in keeping out
of the cattlemen-lumbermen trouble, and that he was going to keep right
along keeping out. He suggested that if there was going to be any
funeral in the immediate vicinity he wasn't hankering to take any more
prominent part than that of a mourner, and that the title-role of such a
performance wasn't any matter of envy with him. However, I succeeded in
persuading him to come part of the way with me, and secured his promise
that he would listen for any shooting, and if I should happen to resign
involuntarily from the Service by the argument of a bullet, that he
would volunteer as a witness in the case."

"I don't altogether blame him, you know," said the red-headed man; "you
said he had a wife there, and interfering with other folks' doings isn't
healthy."

"I didn't blame him either," said the first speaker, "but I would have
liked to have him along. A little farther up the canyon I came to a
recently built log cabin, covered with earth. An old man stood at the
door and I greeted him cheerily. We had a moment's chat, and then I
asked him the way to the cabin where the tie-cutters lived. Judge of my
surprise when he told me this was their cabin, and that they lived with
him. By the time I had secured this much information the two younger men
had come out, and one of them, Tom, wanted to know what I was after. I
stated my business, briefly. There was a pause.

"'Ye 'low as ye're agoin' to jedge them ties,' he said slowly. 'Wa'al I
'low we'll sort 'er go along. Thar's a heap o' fow-el in these yar
parts, stranger, an' I 'low I'll take a gun.'

"The other brother, who seemed more taciturn, turned and nodded to two
youngsters who had come out of the cabin while Tom was speaking. The
elder of the two, a boy about thirteen years old, went into the shack
and returned in a moment brin