Casey went down on all fours and crawled laboriously toward a
concealing bank covered thick with brush. A third bullet clipped
a twig of sage just about three inches above the middle of his
back, and Casey flattened on his stomach and swore. Some one on
the peak of the hill had good eyesight, he decided. Neither
spoke, other than to swear in undertones; for voices carried far
in that clear atmosphere, and nothing could be gained by
conversation.

Darkness never had poured so slowly into that gulch since the
world was young. The campfire had died to black embers before
Casey ventured from his covert, and Barney Oakes seemed to have
holed up for the season. Unless you have lived for a long while
in a land altogether empty of any human life save your own, you
cannot realize the effect of having mysterious bullets zip past
your ears and ruin your supper for you.

"Somebody's gunnin' fer us, looks like t' me," Barney observed
belatedly in a hoarse whisper, from his covert.

"Found that out, did yuh? Well, it ain't the first time Casey's
been shot at and missed," Casey retorted peevishly in the lee of
the bank. "Say! I knowed the sing of bullets before I was old
enough to carry a tune."

"So'd I," boasted Barney, "but that ain't sayin' I learned t'
like the song."

"What I'm figurin' out now," said Casey, "is how to get up there