Tuttle gazed in open-mouthed and wide-eyed astonishment.
"What--what--do you mean, Nick? You did n't wire him to come?"

"No, I did n't! I told him you and me was up against the Dysert
gang--" Nick's voice trailed off into a sleepy murmur--"alone, and
I--was drunk--and likely to get--disorderly."

"You measly, ornery--" Tuttle began. But he saw that Ellhorn was
already asleep and he would not abuse his friend unless Nick could hear
what he said. So he shut his mouth and considered the situation. He
knew well enough that in the days before Emerson's marriage any such
message would have brought Mead to their aid as fast as steam could
carry him. But now, if he did not come--well, what Nick had said was
true, and they would know that the end of the old close friendship had
come. But, for the young wife's sake, if he should come, he and Nick
must not let him do anything foolhardy and they must try to keep him
out of danger.

Tuttle waited up for the midnight train, on which, if Mead heeded
Nick's telegram, he would be likely to arrive. In the meantime, he did
some spying out of the land and learned that Dysert and some of his
followers had hidden themselves, with arms, ammunition, and provisions,
in an empty adobe house belonging to the head of the band. The deputy
marshal knew this meant that the criminals would resist to the last,
and that any attempt to take them would be as perilous an adventure as
he and his friends had ever faced. If Emerson came and anything
happened to him--and it was very unlikely, if they carried the thing
through, that any one of them would come out of it without at least
serious injury--then he and Ellhorn would feel that they had been the
cause of the young wife's bereavement. And yet, with Mead's help, they