A pronounced silence followed before Slim drawled an answer: 

“Cayn’t speak for the other boys, but I reckon I haven’t lost any Kellers, Jim.”

“Why not?  What have you got against him?”

“You know well enough.  He’s under a cloud.  We don’t say he’s a rustler and a bank robber, but then we don’t say he ain’t.”

“I say he isn’t!  Boys, it has come to a show-down.  Keller is a member of the Rangers, sent here by Bucky O’Connor to run down the rustlers.”

Questions poured upon him.

“How do you know?”

“How long have you known?”

“Who told you?”

“Why didn’t he tell us so himself, then?”

Jim waited till they were quiet.  “I’ve seen letters from the governor to him.  He didn’t come here declaring his intentions because he knew there would be nothing doing if the rustlers knew he was in the neighborhood.  He has about done his work now, and it’s up to us to save him before they bump him off.  Who will ride with me to rescue him?”

There was no hesitation now.

Every man pushed forward to have a hand in it.

“Good enough,” nodded Yeager.  “We’ll want rifles, boys.  Looks to me like hell might be a-popping before mo’ning grows very ancient.  We’ll set out from Turkey Creek Crossroads two hours from now.  Any man not on hand then will get left behind.

“And remember—­this is a man hunt!  No talking, boys.  We don’t want the news that we’re coming spread all over the hills before we arrive.”

As Jim descended from the rostrum, his roving gaze fell on Phyl Sanderson standing in the doorway.  Her fears had stolen the color even from her lips, but the girl’s beauty had never struck him more poignantly.

Misery stared at him out of her fine eyes, yet the unconscious courage of her graceful poise—­erect, with head thrown back so that he could even see the pulse beat in the brown throat—­suggested anything but supine surrender to her terror.  Before he could reach her she had slipped into the night, and he could not find her.

Men dribbled in to the Turkey Creek Crossroads along as many trails as the ribs of a fan running to a common centre.  Jim waited, watch open, and when it said that seven o’clock had come he snapped it shut and gave the word to set out.

It was a grim, business-like posse, composed of good men and true who had been sifted in the impartial sieve of life on the turbid frontier.  Moreover, they were well led.  A certain hard metallic quality showed in the voice and eye of Jim Yeager that boded no good for the man who faced him in combat to-day.  He rode with his gaze straight to the front, toward that cleft in the hills where lay Gregory’s Pass.  The others fell in behind, a silent, hard-bitten outfit as ever took the trail for that most dangerous of all big game—­the hidden outlaw.

The little bunch of riders had not gone far before Purdy, who was riding in the rear, called to Yeager.