"Hold up there!" shouted the man. "Steele is here, and wants to go on to-night." The name caught Ross's attention. "Is it Amos Steele?" he asked the driver. The driver assented. "Yep--superintendent of the Gale's Ridge Mine up in Camp." Ross leaned forward and surveyed with interest the pleasant-faced, well-dressed, squarely-built young man who came out of the store and climbed into the stage. In his pocket Ross had the letter Steele had written his father at Weimer's request. "Git out of this," the driver requested briefly of his four bronchos as the stage door slammed to, and the four obligingly "got out" on a run. Just as they left the last house behind them, a figure on horseback whirled by in a cloud of dust, and Ross recognized in the sheepskin coat and hairy chaps the stranger who had attracted his attention during dinner. CHAPTER III DOC TENDERFOOT IN ACTION BESIDES Steele, there were three other passengers inside the stage that night. One was the assistant manager of the Embar Ranch, south of Meeteetse. He had been to Omaha with a car-load of cattle. The remaining two were miners whom Steele had picked up in Butte. This much Ross learned from the driver. He learned many other things by listening to the conversation between Hillis, the manager, and Steele, although all the while he was keenly observant of his surroundings. The stage was bowling along smoothly over a road as level as a floor and flooded by brilliant moonlight. Behind them Cody faded into silvery mist, guarded by the huge shadowy bulks of the Big Horn Mountains. Ahead, houseless and treeless, stretched the shelf until the shimmering mist cut off the sight. And in the distance, so far ahead that sometimes he blended with the mist, rode the horseman in the sheepskin coat. "Hi, there, Andy," called the ranch-manager; "who is that fellow ahead?" Andy, the driver, turned, and looked down through the open flap into the cavernous darkness of the stage. "Don't know. Didn't find out. I have seen fellers, though, that can give more information about themselves per square inch than that same chap ahead there." "I never saw 'im in these parts before," returned Hillis. "Nor I." The driver spat over the flank of the right wheeler. "Gid'ep there, Suke, ye slowmy, you! Hike it, old Blue! Git out of this!" And, having thus jogged the energy of the leaders, Andy gave his attention again to Hillis. "Hain't ever set eyes on that brown chap before. I guessed back there he was bound fer Embar. Looks like a puncher." "I wish"--the assistant manager of the Embar spoke forcefully--"that he and seven or eight more were bound for the Embar." "Short of hands, eh?" questioned Andy, whirling his "black snake" so skilfully that the lash missed the heads of the wheelers, and touched the flank of the nigh leader.