"Do you mean to tell me you two puling infants are out hunting down a man you never saw? Don't the men at the other side know him either? By jinks, you hike out o' this after breakfast and send for some grown-up men. I want part of that reward--and I'm going to have it! Look here!" He turned blackly to Gurdon. "Are you sure that Bransford, or any one else, came in here at all yesterday, or did you dream it? Or was it all a damfool kid joke? Listen here! I worked like a dog yesterday. If you had me stand guard three hours, tired as I was, for nothing, there's going to be more to it. What kind of a sack-and-snipe trick is this, anyway? You just come one at a time and I'll lick the stuffin' out o' both o' you! I ain't feelin' like any schoolboy pranks just now." "No, no; that part's all straight. Bransford's in there, all right," protested Gurdon. "If you hadn't been working in the tunnel you'd have seen him when he went by. Here's the note he left. And his horse and saddle are up at the spring. We left the horse there because he was lame and about all in. Bransford can't get away on him. Rex is just excited--that's all the matter with him. Hankering for glory! I told him last night not to make a driveling idiot of himself. Here, read this insolent note, will you?" Long glowered at the note and flung it aside. "Anybody could 'a' wrote that! How am I to know this thing ain't some more of your funny streaks? You take these horses to water and bring back Bransford's horse and saddle, and then I'll know what to believe. Be damn sure you bring them, too, or we'll go to producing glory right here--great gobs and chunks of it! You Griffith! put down that gun or I'll knock your fool head off! I'm takin' charge of this outfit now, and don't you forget it! And I don't want no maniac wanderin' round me with a gun. You go to gatherin' up wood as fast as ever God'll let you!" "Say, I was mistaken," said the deposed leader, thoroughly convinced once more. "You do look like Bransford, you know." He laid down his rifle obediently. "Look like your grandmother's left hind foot!" sneered the outraged miner. "My eyes is brown and so's Bransford's. Outside o' that----" "No, but you do, a little," said his ally, Steele. "I noticed it myself, last night. Not much--but still there's a resemblance. Poor Cap Griffith just let his nerves and imagination run away with him--that's all." Long sniffed. "Funny I never heard of it before," he said. He was somewhat mollified, nevertheless; and, while cooking breakfast, he received very graciously a stammered and half-hearted apology from young Mr. Griffith, now reduced to the ranks. "Oh, that's all right, kid. But say--you be careful and don't shoot your pardner when he comes back." Gurdon brought back the sorrel horse and the saddle, thereby allaying Mr. Long's wrathful mistrust that the whole affair was a practical joke.