His face was broad, ruddy and good-natured, fringed by a russet-brown hair and beard, slightly sprinkled with gray. A single look at the high forehead, merry brown eyes and smiling mouth, about which a whimsical look would linger in spite of himself, showed that he was a merry, reckless soul, but a man of undaunted courage. “Hyar we come and hyar we go, pegging along the canon,” he half-sung. “Thar was some mistake in my make-up, I reckon, or I’d be a different man. But who keers, ez long ez I am happy ez a buck Digger in grasshopper time? Oh, Lordy, yes.” He stopped and cast a penetrating glance about him, at the same time dropping one leg a little, showing that it was shorter than the other by some two inches. He seemed to listen, and his leonine head was thrown to one side in an attitude of profound attention. The next moment, by a movement of wonderful rapidity, he threw himself out of sight into one of the crevices with which the ravine abounded, and dropping to the earth behind a bowlder, awaited the event. To the casual observer there had been no break in the usual sounds in mountain and forest, but a moment more showed that the wanderer was not at fault, for the sound of hoofs could be plainly heard, coming up from the east. Nearer and nearer they came, and the rapidity of the hoof-beats showed that the horseman, whoever he might be, was coming at the top of his speed; and directly the head of a horse appeared, and a single rider came thundering down the pass, half-lying on the animal’s back, and urging him on with knife and spur, while behind him sounded other hoof-beats, showing that he was pursued. It was a white man, and that was enough for the old hunter, who started out from his place of concealment and checked the flying steed. “Hi, thar, stranger—what’s up?” The rider reined in his furious horse and grasped a weapon, but, seeing that it was a white man who barred the way, dropped his hand and answered, hurriedly: “Indians!” “After you?” “Looks like it, old man.” “Get down quick, then—take yer weepens, and send the hoss on. You’ve got ter lose him, or yer sculp.” The man did not hesitate, but flung himself from the saddle and scored his knife-point sharply across the flank of the horse, which fled on lightly, being freed from its rider, and without a word the hunter led the way into the crevice which he had just left. The horse had just made the last turn in the canon when about twenty of those Arabs of the plains, the Blackfeet, suddenly came in view, riding with loosened reins, their mustangs scrambling like cats along the bed of the canon, and the riders, bending forward like huntsmen in the chase, urging them on by word and blow. They passed like a whirlwind, and were gone; then the hunter bounded to his feet. “Thar they go, the painted riptiles, like bed-bugs armed fur war! Come on, stranger; the quicker we git up these yer rocks the better.”