"And Davy, be sure you snap 'em off in the air; we ain't from Missouri, but we like to be shown," added Bumpus. "I say, Smithy, the country expects every man to do his duty, suh; and if you get your chance, I give you my word, suh, that little gun can be depended on every single time!" shouted the Southerner, Bob White. And so, followed by the good wishes of their chums, the little party of big-horn hunters started forth, none knowing what strange events might be waiting for them among the wild uplifts of the Rockies. CHAPTER X. THE COMING OF KRACKER. "They're sure comin', Thad!" The scoutmaster looked up when Giraffe said this. "Oh! you must mean that big cannon Kracker, and his two friends?" he remarked, in such a cool tone that Giraffe fairly gasped for breath. "That's them!" he declared, with an utter disregard for grammar that would have caused him to lose some of his good points in school had the lapse occurred there. "And my stars! they look ugly enough to eat us all up, without caring for bones!" "But I calculate they won't, all the same," replied the other, smiling with supreme confidence. "Did Allan send you in to tell me?" he continued, for he had delegated the second in command to keep watch and ward when he was busy in his tent doing something. Giraffe nodded his head violently; indeed, any one who did not know how tenacious a hold it had on that long neck, might have been alarmed lest he dislocate his vertebra through such contortions. "Yep; and he said you was to come out and see for yourself," Giraffe went on. "All right, I will then." Thad quietly picked up his little twelve-bore Marlin before quitting the tent; and there was an air of business about his manner of doing so quite different from the fussy way Giraffe had of doing things, but which was apt to appear much more convincing in the eyes of any one who could read character fairly well. When the scoutmaster reached the open air he found quite a buzz of excitement around the confines of the little camp. It seemed as though the scouts must certainly be anticipating something in the line of trouble; because every one who had a gun was nervously fingering the weapon, and watching the coming of the three figures stalking toward the camp from across the little valley. There was Giraffe, first of all, gripping his big rifle eagerly, a grim look on his thin face; Bumpus had his ten-gauge Marlin clenched tightly in his hands, and perhaps some of the usual color was missing from his fat face; but he had a reputation to sustain now, and knew he must toe the mark like a little man; Allan had his rifle in evidence; and Aleck having lost his at the time he was captured, was keeping a hand close to one of his pockets in which reposed a small revolver which one of the other scouts had loaned him.