cool vigilance with which he proposed to make them pay. Even in
the matter of defense he was worse off than they were, but he
knew how to make the most of what he had; knew how to avail
himself of every inch of sagebrush that helped to render him
indistinct to their eyes.

One of the attackers, eager for a clearer shot, exposed himself a
trifle too far in taking aim. Without any loss of time in
sighting, swift as a lightning-flash, the rifle behind the forked
pine spoke. That the bullet reached its mark she saw with a gasp
of dismay. For the man suddenly huddled down and rolled over on
his side.

His comrades appeared to take warning by this example. The men at
both ends of the crescent fell back, and for a minute the girl's
heart leaped with the hope that they were about to abandon the
siege. Apparently the man in the scarlet kerchief had no such
expectation. He deserted his position behind the pine and ran
back, crouching low in the brush, to another little clump of
trees closer to the bluff. The reason for this was at first not
apparent to her, but she understood presently when the men who
had fallen back behind the rolling hillocks appeared again well
in to the edge of the bluff. Only by his timely retreat had the
man saved himself from being outflanked.

It was very plain that the attackers meant to take their time to
finish him in perfect safety. He was surrounded on every side by
a cordon of rifles, except where the bare face of the butte hung
down behind him. To attempt to scale it would have been to expose
himself as a mark for every gun to certain death.