ery long. When he returned he passed close behind
the Boss, so silently that Gideon was not aware of his presence until a
hand was pressed on his spurred heel.

"He's a stranger, Boss," Rube reported in a whisper. "I don't
reco'nize him, nor his pony neither. It don't look as he means comin'
here to our camp, or he'd sure have turned in at the new gate."

"Didn't hear him crossin' the wooden bridge," said Gideon, "and his
mount ain't wearin' soft moccasins."

"Seems to me he's come to a halt," added Isa Blagg.

There was an anxious spell of silent, watchful waiting. No sound or
movement betrayed the presence of marauding Indians, and already the
clouds in the east had taken on the rosy tinge of daybreak.

Gideon Birkenshaw was beginning to comfort himself in the belief that
there would be no attack after all; that his horses were safe. He was
even on the point of laying aside his Winchester and bidding his men
return home with him for breakfast, when suddenly from the farther side
of the corral there came the sharply startling ring of a rifle shot.
It came from a direction in which none of his men had been stationed.

"Who fired that shot?" he cried in wondering surprise. "Whose gun was
it? Anybody know?"

Abe Harum rose to his feet, and, bending his body forward, ran swiftly
past the corral gate. Then he went down on his knees and elbows and
crept along by the stout timbers of the stockade, screened by the long
grass.

The corral was built in a circle, and there were no corners or
buttresses behind which he could conceal himself. Neither could he yet
see anything of the man who had fired the shot. What he did see, when
he had crept a few yards beyond the gate, was a crowd of Indians
gathered close against the palisade. One of them was in the act of
climbing over the sharp-pointed rails. Some seemed already to have
dropped on the inner side, for the ponies were running about the
enclosure in wild alarm.

Abe levelled his rifle and fired at the Redskin now slinging a naked
leg over the spikes.

The shot missed its mark, and the Indian, balancing himself as he
gripped one of the rails, was preparing to jump within when he was
struck by a bullet fired from beyond the other Indians and between them
and the main trail.

Believing that some of the cowboys from Three Crossings had arrived,
and were already at work defending Birkenshaw's property, Abe ran back
to hasten Gideon and his mates.

He met