and Dunne's single holster held a long automatic,
almost powerful as a rifle. They rode slowly, seldom faster than a
walk, peering ahead watchfully, their ears tuned to catch the slightest
suspicious sound.

"This here is like old times," said McHale. "Durn me if I hadn't about
forgotten the feel of a gun under my leg. I wish we could have our
photos took now. We sure look plenty warlike."

"I don't want any photo," said Casey. "If I can get home without
meeting any one, it will suit me down to the ground. I wish we hadn't
brought these guns. It's safer every way."

"It's safer for some people," McHale commented. "S'pose we struck hard
luck to-night and got backed into a corner or followed up too close--how'd
we look without guns? 'Course, I'd take awful long chances before I
shot _at_ anybody; but all the same a Winchester helps out a retirin'
disposition a whole lot."

"No doubt about that. But the devil of packing a gun is the temptation
to use it before you really have to. That accounts for a lot of
trouble. Why, even in the old days, a man who didn't pack a gun was
safe, unless he tracked up with some mighty mean specimen of a killer.
And those dirty killers usually didn't last long."

"That's so in one way," McHale admitted, "but I look at it different.
If nobody but the killers had packed guns they'd have run the whole
show. Some of them gents killed for the fun of it, like a mink in a
chicken coop. The mean sort'd pick out some harmless, helpless party,
and stomp up and down, r'arin' and cussin' till they got up a big mad.
The chances was about even they'd shoot. Usual they didn't try them
plays on men that wore their artillery in plain sight."

"Well, we haven't any killers now, anyway," said Dunne. "This is about
as far as it's safe to go with the horses. We'll wait till the others
come up."

In a few minutes, the faint straining of leather, creak of springs, and
subdued clank of axles came to them. The buckboard loomed out of the
darkness, and halted suddenly.

"That you, boys?" McCrae's voice asked.

"Yes. We won't take the horses any farther. If that watchman is on the
dam to-night he might hear something. We can pack the powder the rest
of the way ourselves."

The rear riders, young Sandy McCrae and Wyndham, arrived. Then a
dispute arose. No one wished to remain with the horses. Casey Dunne
settled it.

"There's only one man going to plant powder and cut fuses, and that's
Oscar," said he. "I