Long before Johnny’s party made the hills they could see that they were closely followed. The dust cloud in back of them came on apace. For an hour the fugitives held their advantage. After that the pursuers’ fresh horses began to gain.

“You think we make the mine?” Johnny cried to Charlie Paul.

Charlie weighed his answer before delivering it. “Mebbe, I guess we make um.”

The Indian patted his rifle and pulled up his horse. Johnny nodded. In another second they had left Charlie far behind. Johnny strained his ears for sound of the Indian’s firing. It came, then, a quick rat-tat-tat-tat! Other guns began to roar. The caÑon which Johnny and Molly were ascending began to echo and reËcho the shooting.

They kept on, Molly half mad, Johnny watching their horses. Some time later Charlie Paul caught up with them, his horse dripping lather.

“We make um mine now,” he said with a grin.

They still had ten long, uphill miles ahead of them. Johnny began to believe they would make it. But what about tonight? The horses they rode would have to face the test again then. The boy knew they would never meet it.

Better to drive them now to their last ounce of endurance and make sure of temporary safety.

“Give ’em the spurs!” he cried. “Crowd ’em!”

With it all they were none too soon. Ten minutes after they had entered the mine, their horses ahead of them, the posse swung around the bend below.

“They can’t be dumb enough to miss us,” Johnny grumbled. “Some of them may go by; but they’ll be back. We’ll fight it out here.”

Charlie and he crawled out upon the tailings from the mine, and there, flat on their stomachs, they watched the men swarming below them.

“Spotted us first crack,” the boy said with a growl. “I knew it! Couldn’t fool old Hobe. He savvies this country.”

“Me shoot now?” Charlie questioned.

“No, not now. By and by we shoot. They won’t smoke us out of here in a hurry.”

Down below the men were spreading out fanwise. Johnny caught glimpses of them as they moved from cover to cover. They had sent their horses down the caÑon.

Charlie Paul glanced at Johnny. He understood the movement below. The pursuers were circling them. Being an Indian, Charlie knew that it was very bad to wait for that circle to close. Death was usually the price of it.

“No good wait,” he argued. “No use shoot bimeby.”

“Let ’em shoot first,” Johnny counseled. “They used to be my friends. Reckon they ain’t now. When we shoot we’ll shoot to kill.”

Half an hour passed without a gun being fired. Johnny felt reasonably safe. The mine was perched on the side of the mountain high above the surrounding country. In front of the tunnel the ground fell away rapidly to a small flat seventy-five yards below. Across this flat the attack would eventually come.

Kent might surround the mountain and thus cut off his quarry’s escape, but Johnny did not worry about being ambushed from behind. Only a mountain sheep could climb up those walls of basalt.

Kent must have come to the same conclusion, for his forces began to close in on the flat. Stuffy Tyler made it first. Johnny’s gun barked as the man started to dash across the flat. Tyler crawled back to shelter behind a bowlder.

“Next man who tries that gets killed,” Johnny yelled.

The word brought Molly to the boy’s side. He pulled her down. “Don’t stand thata-way,” he warned her.

“Is there going to be killing here, Johnny?” Molly asked chokingly.

“Reckon there’s certain to be.”

“Father’s down there. I—I wouldn’t want him killed—”

“He’ll have to look out for himself,” Johnny said without a second’s hesitancy. “It’s me or him. This thing goes through to a finish this time. You go back in the tunnel a ways. There’ll be shootin’ directly.”

Dismissed, beside herself with worry and hopelessness, Molly crawled back to safety. In her heart there was no malice toward Johnny. He was in danger at her request. It made him the master. He was fighting for her!

Her deductions were as primitive as a cave-woman’s. Likewise, they were uncommonly sound.

Kent had his forces in position now, and from behind bowlders a half dozen men dashed for the flat. Charlie Paul did not wait for Johnny’s permission to fire. Johnny’s gun began flashing, too. Two men with arms limp at their sides scurried back. Three others, uninjured, followed them. One man—Stub Rawlings—lay face upward in the open, pawing the ground with his legs, one of which had a hole shot through it.

“Better take care of him, Hobe,” Johnny cried. “Git him out of the way. Just you alone does the job.”

Stalwart, unafraid, big Hobe walked into view.

“Good God, Johnny!” he shouted. “Are you crazy? I’d sure hate to shoot you down; but I’m goin’ to if you don’t give in. What’re you goin’ to do with that girl?”

“Marry her, if she’ll have me.”

The foreman swore a terrible oath. “You can’t steal a girl like that.”

“Hell I can’t!” Johnny roared. “She’s here, ain’t she?”

“Will you give up if we let you go?” Ferris demanded.

“Ain’t no givin’ up this time, Hobe. Don’t you be so sad about me.”

“You damn fool! You pore damn fool!” he repeated over and over again as he went downhill, Stub in his arms.

There came another lull. And then reËnforcements arrived for Kent—Gallup, and no less a person than Jasper Roddy, the sheriff of Shoshone County; and a man Johnny did not know, the Rev. Murray Whitaker.

There was a prodigious amount of consultation soon after Gallup arrived. The boy could see them surrounding Aaron’s rig. The upshot of it was the ascent of the sheriff to the little flat.

“You hear me, there?” Roddy demanded.

“I hear you all right,” Johnny replied. “But I don’t like your voice.”

“You’re under arrest,” the sheriff bawled. “Shootin’ with intent to kill, and five or six other things. I want that horse-stealin’ Injun what’s with you, too.”

“I’d admire to see you git him,” Johnny laughed. “I always had a hankerin’ to see just how yellow you was.”

“Well, you hear me. I’ve sworn in each one of these men as my deputies. We’re goin’ to get you! You’re defyin’ the law now.”

“Don’t you scare me thata-way,” Johnny answered sarcastically. “You’d better stay in the rear of your deputies, Roddy, or this mountain will be your monument, and it’d be a shame to waste one as big as this on you.”

Roddy withdrew and appeared in no hurry to close in on his prisoners. This Dice boy was thoroughly disconcerting.

Kent and Gallup tried to insist on storming the mine at once, but wily Jasper Roddy could see no sense in wasting life when it would be easier—and safer—to starve the fugitives into submission.

The morning passed without another shot being fired. The sun, uncomfortably warm for October, began searching the lower caÑon and finally drove the posse into the shadow of a ledge which cut them off from Johnny’s vision.

Charlie Paul and the boy dozed in turn as the afternoon wore on. Molly, stoical now, boiled coffee and fried bacon for them.

They knew they were closely watched. The westering sun, glinting on polished rifle barrels, betrayed the stalkers.

Evening came on, and with it the acrid smell of burning sagebrush as the posse prepared its supper. The first thrill of the man hunt had worn off, and Kent’s men were bad-tempered.

Madeiras was there, stretched out upon the ground, half asleep. Gallup had been studying him for some time when the Basque, feeling the man’s eyes on him, sat up and stared insolently at the coroner.

“Guess you ain’t sorry you’re down here,” Aaron growled.

“You bat my life on that,” Tony answered with a grin. “We catch those fellow pretty soon.”

“Catch ’em? Who wants to catch ’em? If Roddy had any guts he’d march up there and shoot ’em down. Johnny Dice ain’t worth a cent to me alive.”

“He mak’ lot of trouble, heem.”

“You said it, Madeiras! He ain’t licked till he’s in the ground.”

“Johnny ain’t worth a cent to you alive; how much he worth daid, seÑor?”

Aaron’s head came up at that and he studied the Basque’s face without answering. Then:

“What you drivin’ at?”

“Mebbe man get up those rocks in back of heem, eh?”

“You mean you?”

“Mebbe me,” Tony muttered.

“You show him to me, dead, and there’ll be plenty dinero for you, Madeiras.”

“Perhaps so, I go to jail, too.”

“Not a chance. Roddy’s sworn you in. If that idiot resists arrest, blow his head off and the law’ll back you up.”

Tony did not appear to view the prospect with any degree of faith.

“Law no good for Basque,” he stated. “Plenty Basque in jail.”

“Not if I’m for you,” argued Gallup.

“How I know you be for me?”

“I’m for you if you mean business. Why, here”—and Aaron drew from his pocket a buckskin bag, and undoing the draw-string, held the purse out to the Basque—“run your fingers through that! All gold, all twenties. Five hundred. It’s yours if you go through with this.”

Tony sent his fingers deep into the bag. A crafty light came into Gallup’s eyes as the man felt the precious metal. Tony’s face was working strangely. The coroner thought he read greed—success for himself in it.

But the Basque’s fingers were not caressing the gold pieces. They were searching for something more precious than money.

For weeks he had been yearning to put his fingers in that very purse. Why? A child’s whim. At least the reasoning behind the desire was no more intelligent or logical than a child’s.

The swarthy-faced one’s teeth gleamed as he touched that mysterious thing for which he searched. A thrill passed through his arm. He was holding the gold snake Crosbie Traynor had worn on his hat band!

Reluctantly, Tony withdrew his hand.

“I do thees thing for you,” he muttered. “The boy ees young, he ees in luff—the great passion ees on heem. Eet ees bad to keel a man, then. You—you’re ole; luff ees not for you. But I do thees thing. I get up there. You tell Kent to keep hees men from shoot me?”

“I’ll ’tend to that,” Gallup said, excitedly, as he put away the purse.

“All right, I go; but thees purse, I tak’ heem now!”

It was on Aaron’s tongue to demur, to refuse point blank; but why be cautious? He had gold pieces enough to fill many bags. What were five hundred dollars weighed against Molly Kent? With Johnny Dice out of the way the future was unclouded.

“Don’t you double-cross me,” Gallup warned as he passed the purse to the Basque.

Tony did not even reply. He was gone before Aaron had caught his breath. When he had control of himself he called to Kent and the sheriff.

“Madeiras has gone to bring them in,” he told them. “He’s goin’ up in back of the mine. You pass the word that he’s not to be picked off from below.”

“The skunk!” Hobe growled when Kent told him what was happening. “I wouldn’t blame the boys if they did drill him. You know how they feel toward him. Better not say anythin’ to them.”

It took the Basque more than an hour to get to the top. He made his plans as he moved, and they were admirable. What Charlie Paul would do was his one worry.

Molly was the first to become aware of Madeiras’ presence. He was twenty-five yards above the mine at the time, wriggling along on his stomach. The girl could not move for a second, and as she stood dumfounded she saw Tony roll a small bit of rock in Johnny’s direction. It caught the boy’s attention about the same instant that he saw the girl’s signals. Charlie Paul had swung his rifle around so that it covered the Basque. Johnny knocked it down.

“Don’t shoot,” he warned. “The Basque’s all right.”

“All right?” Molly questioned. “Didn’t he turn his back on you?”

“You don’t understand. He went to the ranch on my say-so.”

With his hand the boy beckoned to Madeiras to come down. “Keep low when you cross the tailin’s,” Johnny told him. “They’ll git you from below if you ain’t careful.”

The boy thought, of course, that Tony had stolen away from Kent’s camp to make his stand with the three of them. He knew he would have done the same thing had the tables been turned.

Imagine his surprise when he saw the Basque kick the Indian’s rifle over the edge of the dump and heard himself ordered to throw up his hands.

The order was heard down below. Men were watching. The Basque made no effort to keep out of sight.

Molly moaned as she saw how Johnny had been fooled by the treacherous Madeiras. Charlie Paul was crawling after his gun. Johnny for once in his life was speechless. He tried to lift his arms, but his muscles would not obey.

The Basque’s gun was not more than three feet from Johnny’s head. The two men were permitted a second in which to stare into each other’s eyes.

The Basque said something. What was it? Madeiras was moving his lips. He was whispering to him, but so low that Molly, even as close as she was, did not hear. Johnny caught the words then. It was a command!

The next instant the Basque’s gun roared. Johnny’s arms went up convulsively. His body whirled, seemed to lose its balance, and for a second swayed crazily over the edge of the dump. Molly screamed and ran to catch him, but the boy was gone. She could see him careening down the tailings, a trail of blood in his wake.

The weight of Johnny’s body set the loose rock in motion. His fall had sent a small avalanche ahead of him, and now he rode upon a moving sea of quartz and feldspar.

The direction in which the rock was falling was away from the men below. Molly saw the almost impenetrable caÑon toward which the body was dashing. She closed her eyes and turned away. But she could not shut from her ears the roaring of that grinding, splintering mass of rock.

Clouds of dust arose and hung over the lower caÑon long after the noise had ceased.

Madeiras climbed out to the edge of the dump. It was twilight, but he could see the men below. They were running about, shouting, and waving their arms. Gallup and Kent and the sheriff were bunched together. The Basque shook his fist at them.

“There he ees, Gallup,” he shouted. “You can come and get heem now!”