He pushed it
open and took a survey of the interior. Then he went to his horse, and
when they saw him going away on the road he had come, they set up a
shouting, and Mart fired a signal. The rider dived from his saddle and
made headlong into the cabin, where the door clapped to like a trap.
Nothing happened further, and the horse stood on the bank.

"That's the funniest man I ever saw," said Nancy.

"They're all funny over there," said Mart. "I'll signal him again." But
the cabin remained shut, and the deserted horse turned, took a few first
steels of freedom, then trotted briskly down the river.

"Why, then, he don't belong there at all," said Nancy.

"Wait, child, till we know something about it."

"She's liable to be right, Liza. The horse, anyway, don't belong, or
he'd not run off. That's good judgment, Nancy. Right good for a little
girl."

"I am six years old," said Nancy, "and I know lots more than that."

"Well, let's get mother and the bedding started down. It'll be noon
before we know it."

There were two pack-saddles in the wagon, ready against such straits as
this. The rolls were made, balanced as side packs, and circled with the
swing-ropes, loose cloths, clothes, frying-pans, the lantern, and the
axe tossed in to fill the gap in the middle, canvas flung over the
whole, and the diamond-hitch hauled taut on the first pack, when a
second rider appeared across the river. He came out of a space between
the opposite hills, into which the trail seemed to turn, and he was
leading the first man's horse. The heavy work before them was forgotten,
and the Clallams sat down in a row to watch.

"He's stealing it," said Mrs. Clallam.

"Then the other man will come out and catch him," said Nancy.

Mart corrected them. "A man never steals horses that way. He drives them
up in the mountains, where the owner don't travel much."

The new rider had arrived at the bank and came steadily along till
opposite the door, where he paused and looked up and down the river.

"See him stoop," said Clallam the father. "He's seen the tracks don't go
further."

"I guess he's after the other one," added Clallam the son.

"Which of them is the ferry-man?" said Mrs. Clallam.

The man had got off and gone straight inside the cabin. In the black of
the doorway appeared immediately the first man, dangling in the grip of
the other, who kicked him along to the horse. There the victim mounted
his own animal and rode back down the