He had scarcely turned the head of his horse toward the mouth of the canon when the pursuit drove headlong into sight.  Galloping men pounded up the arroyo, and came to halt at his sharp summons.  Already Keller and his horse were behind a huge boulder, over the top of which gleamed the short barrel of a wicked-looking gun.

“Mornin’, gentlemen.  Lost something up this gulch, have you?” he wanted to know amiably.

The last rider, coming to a gingerly halt in order not to jar an arm bandaged roughly in a polka-dot bandanna, swore roundly.  He was a large, heavy-set man, still on the sunny side of forty, imperious, a born leader, and, by the look of him, not one lightly to be crossed.

“He’s our man, boys.  We’ll take him alive if we can; but, dead or alive, he’s ours.”  He gave crisp orders.

“Oh!  It’s me you’ve lost?  Any reward?” inquired the man behind the rock.

For answer, a bullet flattened itself against the boulder.  The wounded man had whipped up a rifle and fired.

Keller called out a genial warning.  “I wouldn’t do that.  There’s too many of you bunched close together, and this old gun spatters like hail.  You see, it’s loaded with buckshot.”

One of the cowboys laughed.  He was rather a cool hand himself, but such audacity as this was new to him.

“What’s ailing you, Pesky?  It don’t strike me as being so damned amusing,” growled his leader.

“Different here, Buck.  I was just grinning because he’s such a cheerful guy.  Of course, I ain’t got one of his pills in my arm, like you have.”

“He won’t be so gay about it when he’s down, with a couple of bullets through him,” predicted the other grimly.  “But we’ll take his advice, just the same.  You boys scatter.  Cross the creek and sneak up along the other wall, Ned.  Curly, you and Irwin climb up this side until you get him in sight.  Pesky and I will stay here.”

“Hold on a minute!  Let’s get at the rights of this.  What’s all the row about?” the cornered man wanted to know.

“You know dashed well what it’s about, you blanked bushwhacker.  But you didn’t shoot straight enough, and you didn’t fix it so you could make your getaway.  I’m going to hang you high as Haman.”

“Thank you.  But your intentions aren’t directed to the right man.  I’m a stranger in this country.  Whyfor should I want to shoot you?”

“A stranger.  Where from?” demanded Buck Weaver crisply.

“Douglas.”

“What doing here?”

“Homesteading.”

“Name?”

“Keller.”

“Killer, you mean, I reckon.  You’re a hired assassin, brought in to shoot me.  That’s what you are.”

“No.”

“Yes.  The man we want came into this gulch, not three minutes ahead of us.  If you’re not the man, where is he?”

“I haven’t got him in my vest pocket.”

“I reckon you’ve got him right there in your coat and pants.”