The Wolfes' one-man advance guard ran back with the intelligence that the enemy was just ahead. Old Buck rushed his little force to the left, meaning to make a surprise attack on the Singleton's flank. Oddly enough, Alex Singleton gave the same order at the same time, with the result that the two sides lost each other, and spent hours in maneuvering more or less blindly; not a shot was fired, and the silence in the basin was the silence of the tomb. Buck Wolfe's anxious mother saw that the shadow of bald Pickett's Dome was reaching for the fringe of jackpines that grew on the jagged crest of the Big Blackfern, and she knew it was almost four o'clock. Then, there broke out ahead of her the keen, sharp thunder of rifles--the two factions had met where there was no cover save for puny bushes, and it would probably be a battle of extermination. She forgot her rheumatism, dropped her long staff, and ran toward it. Two others reached the midway point before Granny Wolfe reached it. One of the two was a slender, barefooted young woman with deep blue eyes, copper-colored hair that hung down her back in a single thick plait, and a face that was quite finely handsome in spite of its tear-stains. The other sat astride a rearing, plunging black horse; he was young and stalwart, and an officer's shield gleamed over his heart. "What's the big idea?" he was shouting. "What's the big idea, anyway?" The daredevil personality of the newcomer awed the fighters. Even if they might have counted him out, there would have been no possibility of going on with the battle without danger to the two women. And to continue the fighting there in the open, where they had met by accident--well, the hillman is no coward, but he wants cover when he fights. The two little clans acted wisely. As though by a common agreement, they crept off homeward without a word. The old woman caught the rein of the now quiet horse. "And who might you be, stranger," she cackled, "'at comes a-ridin' in here like a angel o' the Lord?" He smiled very pleasantly. "Don't you know me?" "Not from Adam's off ox, nor a side o' sole-leather!" declared Granny Wolfe. "I know who it is," said the other of the three left upon the scene. "Granny, it's Little Buck!" "La, la, la! You don't tell me it's Little Buck. I be consarned ef I'll believe it!" She shook her white head. [Illustration] "And I know you, too," Wolfe said to the young woman. "Your name is Louisiana Theodosia Singleton, but they call you 'Tot.' You--er, you were my sweetheart when I was a boy. Don't you remember, Tot? Surely, you haven't forgotten the time when I thrashed Cat-Eye Mayfield and threw him into the creek--there at the sand-bar under the willow--for sticking pine-resin chewing gum into your hair! Don't you remember, Tot? Afterward, when we'd disposed of the villain," and here Wolfe's dark eyes twinkled engagingly, "you kissed me as a reward for my--er, gallantry!"