"Don't you believe it," declared the scoutmaster, cheerfully. "We're going to see him through, and if it's necessary, we'll find a way of sending word to the fort, and bringing a bunch of hard-riding cavalrymen here to chase you out of the mountains. And just remember, Colonel Kracker, there are eleven of us, all told, well armed, and knowing how to take care of ourselves. We're no city greenhorns, either, but scouts who have had a whole lot of experience in hard places. Now, if you know what is good for you, keep away from our camps, wherever they may be. Our guide, Toby Smathers, who knows you like a book, says that lots of good people would throw up their hats and cheer, if they heard you'd crossed over the line. You understand what I'm saying, I guess, don't you?" "You're doing a fool play, young feller, believe me," spoke up the man called Waffles, thinking it was up to him to stick in his oar. "They ain't many men as would dar' talk to the kunnel like you done. Better hand the boy over to him; he's his uncle, and has a right to take charge of him." "That's a lie!" burst out Aleck, angrily. "He came around our home, and tried every which way to get mother to just tell him what she knew about the mine, promising all sorts of shares if only she'd trust him; but since she didn't know a single thing about where it lay, and wouldn't believe him on oath, either, course she didn't make any arrangement. But he ain't any relation of mine." "It wouldn't make any difference if he was, Aleck; when you say you don't want anything to do with Kracker, that settles it," and Thad all this while kept his eyes fixed on the big man, because he believed the other to be just full of treachery and all kinds of trickery, so that he would be ready to do something desperate if only he thought he could take the young scoutmaster by surprise, and off his guard. "You don't understand the matter at all," complained the big man, with something like a whine in his gruff voice now, showing that he was pretty nearly cowed. "How is that?" demanded the other, instantly. "I'm meaning to be his friend, and the friend, of his folks," Kracker continued. "Funny way you have of showing your friendly feelings, then, I must say," declared Thad, with scorn in his voice; "making him a prisoner, trying to force him to give up a secret you choose to think he carries; and when he refuses to take you at your word, putting him there on that ledge, to starve, or face a horrible death in perhaps falling down a couple of hundred feet." Kracker looked a little confused, but it was only a flash in the pan. Such a thing as shame was foreign to his nature. For years he had been used to browbeating almost every person with whom he had had dealings. The fact that first of all a mere slip of a woman had dared defy him, and then her boy did the same, nettled him beyond description; and he had arrived at desperate measures at the time Aleck, so unfortunately for the boy, fell into his hands.