The horse started and wheeled, plunging against the Missourian’s wagon. Cameron brought up and turned to see the dripping face of an Indian buck poke through the vine maple, stare a moment, and disappear. He spurred the horse in pursuit, but the underbrush was too heavy and, recollecting a clearing a short distance back which seemed to promise entrance into the soaked woods, he swung around and galloped down the line of schooners. The coast tribes, he had heard, were not openly hostile. It paid, however, always to keep on the alert. One Indian might mean a whole band of warriors waiting at some convenient ambush. So thinking, he edged between bushes and wagons, the horse sliding in the mire. Of a sudden the brush dropped back into the mist and a bare foreground loomed up ahead. Turning, horse and rider were immediately isolated from the column. The grind and clatter advanced out of the haze, witness to the proximity of people; a driver spoke to his oxen in tones that boomed up to Cameron like a gun shot; and yet there was not a single glimpse of movement to be seen through the uncanny pall. The rain beat slantwise against him, redoubled in force. Then the horse stopped and a young man in homespun, hatless, dashed through the mist, closely followed by a mounted trio. The young fellow pulled up directly before Cameron with something like a gasp of relief. Upon sight of this the horsemen came to a sharp stop. “Oh, you’re hereabouts, huh?” grunted the foremost. A scowling chap, he was, with a black cowlick roaming below the brim of his Missouri hat and dividing a narrow forehead. It was a dark face with a broad nose and thick, mobile lips--handsome in a way and possessing, when broadened into a smile, an undoubted attraction for women. It was otherwise with the men of the train, who saw only the danger signs in the ill-disciplined features. They left “Hank” Emory, leader of the three Emory boys, alone. The other two were lesser copies of the older brother, with much the same sullen expression, the same pouting lips and depth of chest. “Tom,” said the young fellow, panting. “They’re pickin’ on me ag’in.” “I’ll teach you to stand in my road!” cried Hank Emory, swinging down from his saddle. “Make a monkey out o’ me, huh?” The first rule of frontier existence bids each man shoulder his own burden and go his own way; interference is not tolerated save as it comes by request. Here was a fight brewing between the bully and the other, with three men a-saddle impassively looking on. Emory was the heavier, the more dangerous, carrying with him the threat of many whispered brutalities. The chap facing him, while not much younger, seemed to be overawed by his reputation, but he shook his fist at the aggressor and appealed to Cameron. “I ran because all three were on me. You see fair play’s done, and I’ll fight. I ain’t afraid.” Cameron nodded. “Clean fightin’, Emory. No rough an’ tumble.”