Instinctively Hi Stevens knew that the threat was no bluff. Moved by resentment toward Big Anderson, who had started this ill-fated horseplay, Stevens suddenly reached over and, before his astonished friend could recover from his stupor, yanked one of Anderson's ears and clouted him across the cheek with his other hand. Big Anderson roared with anger and glared at Stevens; but, while he rubbed the red mark on his cheek, he made no move that the frock-coated stranger might have interpreted as hostile. "Now, mister, it's your turn to teach _him_ not to go callin' names." Big Anderson stepped toward Stevens with blood in his eyes. "Mister, yuh stand still an' take it or I'll----" The stranger had no need to voice his threat, for Hi Stevens stopped in his tracks and waited. Anderson yanked Stevens' ear, raised a big, hairy paw, and clouted him on the side of the head with such force that Stevens reeled backward. "Now get the hell out of here!" the stranger snapped. The two bullies, murderous with rage, both at each other and at the stranger, whirled about and hurried into the Ace High Saloon. The little man waited until they disappeared. Then he returned his guns to their holsters, with a movement as swift as that with which he had drawn them, whirled on his heel, and stalked toward the hotel. "Baldy" Kane, a slender man of forty whose face and head were as guiltless of hair as an egg and whose gray eyes and long, sallow face were entirely devoid of expression, watched the black-coated stranger enter the hotel, then turned to a friend and asked: "Who's the little rooster?" His friend nodded toward the ragged boy, who was now walking down the dusty street by the side of Pop Howes. "Jim-twin Allen horned in suddenlike when the boys was thinkin' of stoppin' the little man, so I figger the little runt with the whiskers is Jim's brother--'Jack-twin' Allen." Kane shrugged, turned on his heel, and followed Big Anderson and Hi Stevens into the Ace High. A miner leaped down and whispered to a companion. "If that there rip-snortin' hellion of a Wyoming sheriff is here, hell is sure goin' to pop, an' Baldy is thinkin' fast an' hard!" "'Tain't safe to talk!" the other mumbled out of the corner of his mouth and turned away. CHAPTER XIII THE MINERS' MEETING Pop Howes' mine, the American Beauty, was about a mile from town on the south side of the mining gulch where the walls became sheer and closed in. At the foot of the slope he had built a small three-room shack where he and his wife lived. Back of this were the barns, a donkey engine, and a narrow building where his Mexican workers formerly ate and slept. But the bunk house was now deserted, the engine silent. No work was going on in the shaft. For thirty years Pop Howes had worked and saved; now he had been robbed and was broke. He had exhausted his credit at the bank. His eyes were bitter as they stared at the empty buildings.