Are we, boys ?" "No, by G-d!" said his followers, dropping the pans and seizing their picks and revolvers.

They understood the appeal to arms if not to their reason.

For an instant the fight seemed imminent.

Then a voice from behind them said:-- "You needn't trouble yourselves about that! I'M Marshall! I sent these gentlemen to occupy the claim until I came here with the surveyor," and two men stepped from a thicket of myrtle in the rear of Steptoe and his followers.

The speaker, Marshall, was a thin, slight, overworked, over-aged man; his companion, the surveyor, was equally slight, but red-bearded, spectacled, and professional-looking, with a long traveling-duster that made him appear even clerical.