sed through, and stood well back, out of
sight under the trees, to watch.

Wally snorted disdain of any proceeding so spectacular, but he was as he
was made, and he could not keep his dare-devil spirit quite in abeyance.
He twitched his hat farther back on his head, stuck his hands deep into
his pockets, and walked deliberately out into the open, his neck as
stiff as a newly elected politician on parade. He did not stop, as Jack
had done, but he facetiously whistled "Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are
marching," and he went at a pace which permitted him to finish the tune
before he reached the gate. He joined Jack in the shade, and his face,
when he looked back to the stable, was anxious.

"It must be Grant he wants, all right," he muttered, resting one hand
on Jack's shoulder and speaking so he could not be overheard from the
house. "And I wish to the Lord he'd stay where he's at."

But Good Indian was already two paces from the door, coming steadily up
the path, neither faster nor slower than usual, with his eyes taking in
every object within sight as he went, and his thumb hooked inside his
belt, near where his gun swung at his hip. It was not until his free
hand was upon the gate that lack and Wally knew they had been holding
their breath.

"Well--here I am," said Good Indian, after a minute, smiling down at
them with the sunny look in his eyes. "I'm beginning to think I had a
dream. Only"--he dipped his fingers into the pocket of his shirt and
brought up the flattened bullet--"that is pretty blamed realistic--for
a dream." His eyes searched involuntarily the rim-rock with a certain
incredulity, as if he could not bring himself to believe in that bullet,
after all.

"But two of the jumpers are gone," said Wally. "I reckon we stirred 'em
up some yesterday, and they're trying to get back at us."

"They've picked a dandy place," Good Indian observed. "I think maybe it
would be a good idea to hold that fort ourselves. We should have thought
of that; only I never thought--"

Phoebe, heavy-eyed and pale from wakefulness and worry, came then, and
called them in to breakfast. Gene and Clark came in, sulky still, and
inclined to snappishness when they did speak. Donny announced that he
had been in the garden, and that Stanley told him he would blow the top
of his head off if he saw him there again. "And I never done a thing to
him!" he declared virtuously.

Phoebe set down the coffee-pot with an air of decision.

"