At the entrance to the pass a mountaineer named Reed met them.  It was he who had brought the news of the latest exploit by Slade and Skelly, but he had returned quickly to warn some friends of his in the foothills and was back again in time to meet the soldiers.  He was a long thin man of middle age, riding a large black mule.  An immense gray shawl was pinned about his shoulders, and woollen leggings came high over his trousers.  As he talked much he chewed tobacco vigorously.  But Dick saw at once that like many of the mountaineers he was a shrewd man, and, despite lack of education, was able to look, see and judge.

Reed glanced over the column, showed his teeth, yellowed by the constant use of tobacco, and the glint of a smile appeared in his eyes.

“Look like good men.  I couldn’t hev picked ’em better myself, colonel,” he said, with the easy familiarity of the hills.

“They’ve been in many battles, and they’ve never failed,” said the colonel with some pride.

“You’ll hev to do somethin’ more than fight up thar on the high ridges,” said the mountaineer, showing his yellow teeth again.  “You’ll hev to look out fur traps, snares an’ ambushes.  Slade an’ Skelly ain’t soldiers that come out an’ fight fa’r an’ squar’ in the open.  No, sirree, they’re rattlesnakes, a pair uv ’em an’ full uv p’ison.  We’ve got to find our rattlesnakes an’ ketch ’em.  Ef we don’t, they’ll be stingin’ jest the same after you’ve gone.”

“That’s just the way I look at it, Mr. Reed.  Sergeant Whitley here is a specialist in rattlesnakes.  He used to hunt down and kill the big bloated ones on the plains, and even the snow won’t keep him from tracing ’em to their dens here in the mountains.”

Reed, after the custom of his kind, looked the sergeant up and down with a frank stare.

“‘Pears to be a good man,” he said, “hefty in build an’ quick in the eye.  Glad to know you, Mr. Whitley.  You an’ me may take part in a shootin’ bee together an’ this old long-barreled firearm uv mine kin give a good account uv herself.”

He patted his rifle affectionately, a weapon of ancient type, with a long slender barrel of blue steel, and a heavy carved stock.  It was just such a rifle as the frontiersmen used.  Dick’s mind, in an instant, traveled back into the wilderness and he was once more with the great hunters and scouts who fought for the fair land of Kain-tuck-ee.  His imagination was so vivid that it required only a touch to stir it into life, and the aspect of the mountains, wild and lonely and clothed in snow, heightened the illusion.

“I s’pose from what you tell us that you’ll have the chance to use it, Mr. Reed,” said the sergeant.