Something--perhaps it was that consciousness which horses have of the approach of other beings, scent, hearing, or a sense of their own which we can not understand--made the chestnut race-horse lift his head and nicker. One of the men rose silently to a sitting posture, and reached for his rifle. For a moment he seemed to be looking right at me; but his eyes passed on, and he carefully examined every bit of foliage and every ant-hill and grass-mound, and all the time he strained his ears for sounds. I held my breath. At last he lay down again; but in a few minutes he got up, and woke the others. This was my first sight of Bowie Bushyager. Everybody in Monterey County, and lots of other people will remember what the name of Bowie Bushyager once meant; but it meant very little more than that of his brother, Pitt Bushyager, who got up, grumbling and cursing when Bowie shook him awake. Bowie was say twenty-eight then, and a fine specimen of a man in build and size. He was six feet high, had a black beard which curled about his face, and except for his complexion, which was almost that of an Indian, his dead-black eye into which you could see no farther than into a bullet, and for the pitting of his face by smallpox, he would have been handsome. "Shut up!" said he to his brother Pitt. "It's time we're gittin' our grub and pullin' out." Pitt was even taller than Bowie, and under twenty-five in years. His face was smooth-shaven except for a short, curly black mustache and a little goatee under his mouth His eyes were larger than Bowie's and deep brown, his hair curled down over his rolling collar, and he moved with an air of ease and grace that were in contrast with the slow power of Bowie. There was no doubt of it--Pitt Bushyager was handsome in a rough, daredevil sort of way. I am describing them, not from the memory of that morning, but because I knew them well afterward. I knew all the Bushyager boys, and their father and mother and sisters; and in spite of everything, I rather liked both Pitt and Claib. Bowie was a forbidding fellow, and Asher, who was between Bowie and Pitt in age, while he was as big and strong as any of them, was the gentlest man I ever saw in his manners. He did more of the planning than Bowie did. Claiborne Bushyager was about my own age; while Forrest was older than Bowie. He was always able to convince people that he was not a member of the gang, and now, an old white-haired, soft-spoken man, still owns the original Bushyager farm, with two hundred acres added, where I must confess he has always made enough money by good farming to account for all the property he has.