"The rustler!" she cried.
"The alleged rustler, Miss Sanderson," he corrected gently.
"Let me past," she panted.
He observed that her eyes mirrored terror of the scene she had just left.
"It's you that has got the drop on me, isn't it?" he suggested.
The rifle went back to the saddle. Instantly the girl was in motion again, flying up the cañon past the white-stockinged roan, her pony's hindquarters gathered to take the sheep trail like those of a wild cat.
Keller gazed after her. As she disappeared, he took off his hat, bowed elaborately, and remarked to himself, in his low, soft drawl: "Good mo'ning, ma'am. See you again one of these days, mebbe, when you ain't in such a hurry."
But though he appeared to take the adventure whimsically his mind was busy with its meaning. She was in danger, and he must save her. So much he knew at least.
He had scarcely turned the head of his horse toward the mouth of the cañon when the pursuit drove headlong into sight. Galloping men pounded up the arroyo, and came to halt at his sharp summons. Already Keller and his horse were behind a huge boulder, over the top of which gleamed the short barrel of a wicked-looking gun.
"Mornin', gentlemen. Lost something up this gulch, have you?" he wanted to know amiably.
The last rider, coming to a gingerly halt in order not to jar an arm bandaged roughly in a polka-dot bandanna, swore roundly. He was a large, heavy-set man, still on the sunny side of forty, imperious, a born leader, and, by the look of him, not one lightly to be crossed.
"He's our man, boys. We'll take him alive if we can; but, dead or alive, he's ours." He gave crisp orders.
"Oh! It's me you've lost? Any reward?" inquired the man behind the rock.
For answer, a bullet flattened itself against the boulder. The wounded man had whipped up a rifle and fired.
Keller called out a genial warning. "I wouldn't do that. There's too many of you bunched close together, and this old gun spatters like hail. You see, it's loaded with buckshot."
One of the cowboys laughed. He was rather a cool hand himself, but such audacity as this was new to him.
"What's ailing you, Pesky? It don't strike me as being so damned amusing," growled his leader.
"Different here, Buck. I was just grinning because he's such a cheerful guy. Of course, I ain't got one of his pills in my arm, like you have."
"He won't be so gay about it when he's down, with a couple of bullets through him," predicted the other grimly. "But we'll take his advice, just the same. You boys scatter. Cross the creek and sneak up along the other wall, Ned. Curly, you and Irwin climb up this side until you get him in sight. Pesky and I will stay here."