in with that crowd," and his keen eyes
glanced swiftly over the valley in front of them. "There are too many
places along this trail, where them skunks could hide and shoot us
without our getting a shot back at them, to suit me. But they will
hardly venture to take a shot at us, while we are with a crowd of armed
men like that. Hurrah! Come on!" and, striking his pack-horse with his
whip, Thure hurried on down the hill.

A couple of hours later the two boys overtook the slower-moving train of
wagons; and were given a hearty welcome by the gaunt, roughly dressed
and rougher-looking men, who, as they had surmised, were bound for the
gold-mines.

Thure, as they joined the little company of prospective miners, turned
and looked backward, just in time to see two horsemen appear on the brow
of a distant hill, halt their horses and sit staring in their direction
for a couple of minutes; and then, wheeling their horses about disappear
down the other side of the hill.

"Queer!" thought Thure. "I should think they'd be only too glad to join
us, unless," and his heart gave a jump at the thought, "unless they were
Brokennose and Pockface following on our trail! I wonder--"

But here the men of the wagon-train, gathering excitedly about him and
all eagerly asking questions, drove all further thoughts of the two
solitary horsemen out of his head.

There were fifteen men, two women, and three children--a girl of
fourteen and two boys thirteen years old--in the company; and all had
come from the great wilderness to the north, whither they had gone from
the States some three years before. They had been traveling for many
days southward, through a wilderness inhabited only by wild beasts and
Indians, without seeing a human being, except a few Indians, although
they had passed a number of deserted ranchos on their way down the
Sacramento Valley, until Thure and Bud rode into their midst. All the
men were armed with long-barreled rifles, huge knives, and some of them,
in addition, carried a pistol or a revolver. They were dressed for the
most part in deerskins and their hair and beards had grown so long, that
only their bright eyes and bronzed noses and gleaming white teeth, when
they smiled or opened their mouths, were visible. All the other features
of their faces were hidden behind matted locks of hair. The faces of the
women and the children had been browned by the sun, until they were
nearly of the color of Indians, and their cl