"Take my advice," he warned, "and git away from Zoolah--she came almighty close to recognizing you. Now about this sheepman, Grimes, he knows these boys by sight and they can't any of 'em git near him; but that saddle of yours will tell any one you're no Texan and I believe you can ride plumb up to him. You're a stranger, see, and you can cuss out the Scarboroughs and tell him all the things they done to you; and after you've got next to him and found out all his plans--_you come back here and tell me_. Do that, and you'll git to see Allifair." "Well, it's treacherous," observed McIvor at last, "but I've been that, and worse, before now. And if this man is coming in to stir up a war perhaps I can turn him back." "This is what will turn him back," returned Meshackatee, patting his pistol, "and, believe me, nothing else. That _hombre_ is a fighter, he comes on a-charging, and nothing but a bullet will stop him. But leave that to me and this bunch of inbred Texans--and by the way, that's Isham coming." He pointed to the canyon down which they had come and two horsemen, riding fast, flashed around a point and came galloping across the plain. "You'd better wait," suggested Meshackatee, "you're supposed to be a prisoner, and maybe he'll have other plans." "I'm not working for _him_!" declared McIvor, obstinately, "I'm doing this work for you." "Fair enough," agreed Meshackatee, "but I'm working for him. So try to stand in on the play. Come on, we'll go down to the house." They arrived just as Elmo, the youngest of the Scarboroughs, stepped out from where he had been sulking. He was short and sandy, with a slouchy wool hat and two guns hung low on his hips. Each was tied at the bottom with a buckskin string which held the muzzles close to his legs, so that the carved ivory handles stuck out at such an angle that they practically touched his hands. Both holsters were cut away until they barely held their pistols, and the whole was arranged so that he could draw and shoot in the shortest possible time. But the boy himself--for he was hardly a man--had on his face such a look of both weakness and reckless deviltry that McIvor looked him over again. He was sullen now, after his defeat by the sheepmen and the tongue-lashing that Zoolah had given him, but he stepped out to meet his brothers with such a purposeful swagger that Mrs. Scarborough allowed him to pass. "Well, they've come, boys," he announced, "Dave Grimes and twenty Mexicans, and nigh onto ten thousand sheep. They got in behind us--come across the Reservation--and now they're headed for the Basin!" "Let 'em come!" challenged Isham, dropping down off his horse, "that suits me to a hickey--let 'em come! But the first damned Mexican that puts a sheep across Turkey Crick is going to git killed, that's all! That's my dead-line--Turkey Crick--and the minute they step across it the fireworks is going to begin!"