For he began to slacken his pace and when a quarter of a mile from the place where Mr. Merkel had determined to make a stand, the horseman pulled up his steed. Then he sat in the saddle and gazed long and earnestly at the shack and those who stood grouped in front of it. "Look out!" suddenly cried Bud, who was watching the horseman through the glasses. "He's going to draw!" This meant gun play, and the cowboys realized this, for they lost no time in "ducking" behind shelter. Bud, too, was taking no chances, but as he continued to look, from a vantage point, he said: "I made a mistake. He's only using glasses, same as I am. He didn't pull a gun." "Who is he?" asked Nort. "Anybody we know?" Dick inquired. "Never saw him before, to my knowledge," remarked Bud. "He's a Mexican or a Greaser, I take it." These terms were almost synonymous, except that a Mexican was a little higher class than a Greaser half-breed, as the term, was sometimes applied. "Let me take a look," suggested Yellin' Kid. "I know most of the class on the other side of the Rio Grande." Long and earnestly the cowboy gazed through the glasses at the lone figure on the other side of Spur Creek--a gaze that was returned with interest, so to speak. "He's Mex all right," said Yellin' Kid, handing the glasses to Billee, "but what his game is I don't know." "Looks like he just came to size us up," observed Billee, after an observation, at the conclusion of which the stranger turned his horse and rode slowly off in the direction whence he had come. "That's right," assented Bud. "Do you think he's a sheep herder?" asked Nort. "Might be. Looks mean enough," said Yellin' Kid. The cattle men could say nothing too strong against this despised class of breeders and their innocent charges. Sheep herders were the scum of the earth to the ranchmen, and to say that a man has "gone in for sheep" was to utter the last word against him, though he might be a decent member of society for all that, and with as kind and human instincts as his more affluent neighbor raising cattle or horses. "Well, he knows we're here and on the job, at any rate," commented Bud as the horseman slowly disappeared from sight in the distance. "Yes, and he'll very likely tell his band and we'll have them buzzing about our ears before we know it," remarked Billee. "Then we'll fight!" cried Bud. "That's right!" chimed in Nort and Dick. "I wish my leg was in better shape," complained Yellin' Kid. "But I can make a shift to ride if I have to." However, the next two days passed with no signs of any activities on the part of the enemy. No sheep were sighted being driven up through the pass to the lands that were now, by government proclamation, open to whoever wanted to claim them, barring only those already having large holdings of grazing range. "But this is only the calm before the storm," declared Bud, when he and his chums talked it over. "We'll have a fight yet."