ry were talking earnestly when they heard a pony's
hoofs behind them. Hazelton turned with a start.

"Oh, it's Rutter mounted," Hazelton said, with a sigh of relief.
"I was afraid it was Bad Pete."

"Take my word for it, Harry. Peter is a good deal of a coward.
He won't dare to show up until he has some real cartridges.
The temperance kind do not give a man like Peter any real sense
of security in the world."

Rutter rode along on his sure-footed mountain pony at a rapid
jog. When he came close, Tom and Harry stepped aside into the
brush to let him go by on the narrow trail.

"Don't get off into the brush that way," yelled Rutter from the
distance.

"We're trying to give you room," Tom called.

"I don't need the room yet. I won't run over you, anyway. Stand out
of the brush, I tell you."

Tom good-humoredly obeyed, Harry moving, too, though starting
an instant later.

Prompt as he was, however, Tom Reade was a fraction of a second
too late.

Behind them there was a half-whirring, half-clicking sound.

Then Reade felt a stinging sensation in his left leg three or
four inches from the heel.

"Look out!" yelled Rutter, more excitedly than before. "Get away
from there!"

Tom ran some distance down the trail. Then he halted, laughing.

"I wonder what's on Rut's mind," he smiled, as Hazelton joined
him.

Jack Rutter came at a gallop, reining up hard as he reached where
Tom had stood.

Again that whirring, clicking sound. Rutter's pony reared.

"Still, you brute!" commanded Rutter sternly. Then, without waiting
to see whether his mount would stand alone, Rutter leaped from
saddle, going forward with his quirt---a rawhide riding whip---uplifted.

Into the brush from which Tom had stepped Rutter went cautiously,
though he did not lose much time about it.

Swish! swish! swish! sounded the quirt, as Rutter laid it on
the ground ahead of him. Then he stepped out. The pony had drawn
back thirty or forty feet and now stood trembling, nostrils distended.

"Is that the way you take your exercise?" Reade demanded.

Rutter, however, came running along the trail, his face white
as though from worry.

"Reade," he demanded, "Did that thing strike you?"

"What thing," asked Tom in wonderment.

"The rattler that I killed!"

"Rattler?" gasped both cub engineers.

"Yes. From the distance I thought I saw it strike out at you.
There's a nest of the reptiles at some point near that brush.
That's why