"Don't know anything about that ere," grinned the guide; "but if so be you mean will they come around, and eat his mutton, I'm afraid that's jest what'll happen. But," he added, as Smithy gave a plaintive little bleat, "they cain't eat them big horns, you know; and I reckons as how that's the main thing you wants, ain't it?" "Oh! yes, if that is so, I shall stop worrying. But I surely do want to carry that souvenir back with me; because, you know that is my first game," Smithy went on to say. "Wall," remarked the guide, with a nod, "you had ought to be proud of 'em; 'cause they ain't many fellers as kin say the fust wild game they ever knocked down was a big-horn. I've knowed old hunters as couldn't ever git one, try as hard as they might. We had a heap of luck to-day, let me tell you, boys, a heap of it. And for mutton, 'twan't so _very_ tough, either." "Oh! I thought I heard some one give a funny little cough just then!" exclaimed Step Hen, suddenly sitting up straight. "You was correct at that," said the guide, quietly drawing his rifle closer to him, as though caution were second nature. "There is some parties accomin' down the canyon here, and headin' for our fire." "The boys, mebbe!" exclaimed Davy Jones. "No, I don't think they be," Toby Smathers added, straining his eyes to catch the first glimpse of the newcomers; for in this wild region, strangers are not to be always recognized as friends until they have proven themselves such. "There's two of 'em," remarked Step Hen, "and they're men, I c'n see." "Hello! there, don't shoot, we're friends, all right!" called a voice, so peculiar in itself that Toby immediately laughed aloud, as though he had no difficulty in recognizing it. "Is that Sheriff Bob McNulty?" he asked. "Nobody else," came the reply; "and unless I'm mighty far off my base, that must be my old friend, Toby Smathers, the forest ranger." The two men came on to the fire. The boys saw that the one whom Toby had called Sheriff Bob was a tall, angular man, wearing the regulation wide-brimmed soft hat, and long black coat that sheriffs out in the Wild and Woolly West seem to so frequently think a badge of their calling. He impressed them as a man of sterling character; but they did not entertain the same sort of an opinion toward his companion, who was a middle-aged man, lanky and sinister in appearance, and with a crafty gleam in his shifting eyes that somehow gave Step Hep and Davy Jones a cold feeling of distrust. "Why, what's this mean, Toby; you a forest ranger camping with a parcel of kids?" exclaimed the sheriff, throwing a quick, interrogative glance toward his companion, which the other answered with a negative shake of the head, after giving each of the three boys a keen look, while a shade of bitter disappointment crossed his crafty face.