Presently he shifted his pose, threw back his head, and Big
Pete's eyes were fixed on the valley in front of us, as with distended
nostrils he sniffed the mountain air, his brows contracted to a frown,
his eyes lost their gentle angelic look and seemed to change from China
blue to a cold steel color, and his tightly closed mouth had a stern
expression about the corners which appeared altogether out of keeping
with the occasion.

"Rot my hide!" he exclaimed, "if I hain't had a neighbor all these years
and never knowed it. Waugh! Some emigrant--terrification seize him!--has
found another park an' squatted, t'ain't more'n eight miles as a crow
flies from mine, nuther, Le-loo." He looked at the sun and muttered.
"Hang me, but 'tis t'other end of my own park," then he paused a moment
and added fiercely, "if these geysers know when they are well off,
they'll steer shy of Darlinkel Park. If I catch 'em scoutin' 'round my
claim, I'll send 'em a-hoppin'."

"Bless me, you are neighborly," exclaimed a voice in smooth, even tones.

"What!" said Pete, looking sternly at me. "Did you speak?"

"I said nothing," I replied.

Big Pete's countenance changed and he ran his hands over the cartridges
in his belt in the old familiar manner, and with a motion quicker than I
can describe it, whipped out his revolvers and wheeled about face, at
the same time snapping out the words, "Throw up your hands!"

CHAPTER XVII

We were standing on the surface of a flat table-rock, which jutted out
from the face of the towering cliff and overhung the valley that was
spread out like a map beneath us. About twenty feet back from the edge
of the rock was a pile of debris heaped up against the face of the
cliff; but the remaining surface of the stone was clean bare and
weather-beaten. The talus against the cliff was composed of loose
fragments of stone and other products of wash and erosion. This was
overgrown with a thicket of stunted shrubs, wry-necked goblin thistles
and murderous devil's clubs. These bludgeon-shaped plants, thickly
covered with sharp thorns, reared aloft their weapons as if in menace to
all living things; the unstable ground and thorny thicket formed the
only shelter where we could be ambushed in the rear, and it was not a
likely spot to be chosen for such a purpose by man or beast.

When Big Pete wheeled about face with his trusty revolvers in hand, I
quickly followed his example, and our mutual surprise may be imagined