"You're right: I beg your pardon," I answered Westmore's remark to me.
"You don't look slugged."

"That's easy fixed," said Tim, calmly. He removed his hat and hit his
forehead a very solid blow against a projection of the conglomerate
boulder. The girl screamed slightly.

"Hush!" warned Tim in a fierce whisper. He raised his hand toward the
approaching horsemen, who were now very near. Without attention to the
blood streaming from his brow he bent his head to listen to the faint
clinking of steel against rock that marked the stallion's progress
toward the alkali flat. The searchers were by now dangerously close, and
Tim uttered a smothered oath of impatience. But at last we distinctly
heard the faint, soft thud of galloping hoofs.

The searchers heard it, too, and reined up to listen. Tim thrust into my
hand the 30-30 Winchester he was carrying together with a box of
cartridges. Then with a leap like a tiger he gained the rim of the
_barranca_. Once there, however, his forces seemed to desert him. He
staggered forward calling in a weak voice. I could hear the volley of
rapid questions shot at him by the men who immediately surrounded him;
and his replies. Then somebody fired a revolver thrice in rapid
succession and the whole cavalcade swept away with a mighty crackling of
brush. Immediately after Tim rejoined us. I had not expected this.

Relieved for the moment we hurried Miss Emory rapidly up the bed of the
shallow wash. The tunnel mentioned was part of an old mine operation,
undertaken at some remote period before the cattle days. It entered the
base of one of those isolated conical hills, lying like islands in the
plain, so common in Arizona. From where we had hidden it lay about three