"Yes. What on earth are you doing here?"
"Same thing as yourself. This old Siwash missed you somehow. He found McHale and young McCrae, and, on the way out, he ran into Dade, Lewis, and the rest—six in all. When he got to the ranch you were gone, and nobody could tell him where. He came over to Talapus to tell them he'd seen Sandy. That's where I ran into him. And so, knowing that Sandy was with McHale, I got the old man to come back with me. I wanted to be in it if help was needed. We picked up your trail—or he did—and here we are."
"Well, it's blamed decent of you, Farwell," said Casey. "I didn't know that you and Sandy were such friends."
"We're not. The kid doesn't like me. I told you he pulled a gun on me once. All the same, it was up to me this time. I'm going to marry Sheila."
"The devil you are!" Casey exclaimed.
"You're blamed flattering," said Farwell. "You bet I'm going to marry her."
"You're getting one of the finest girls on earth."
"I know that as well as you do," said Farwell. "Then you see how it was up to me——"
He broke off suddenly. Rolling softly along the hills, flung back and forth across the valley from rock wall to rock wall, repeated and magnified a hundred times, came an echo. So distant was it that the original sound itself was not heard; merely the reverberations of it struck the ear. But unmistakably it was made by a far-off gun. Before the echoes had died away others followed, until their resonance resembled continuous thunder.
"Hiyu shootum!" said Simon.