g happened. A cloud-obscured moon had been
climbing the eastern hills, and at that moment the clouds parted and the
entire valley was bathed in moonlight.

The light was peaceful and beautiful, but it brought a deadly effect.
Not only did it reveal the cattlemen to their enemies in the hills, but
to those in the distant ranch house, as well. The cracking of rifles was
almost continuous in that fatal triangle, in which the sheepmen formed
two points, and the cowmen the tragic third.

As the trapped fifteen rushed their mounts toward the shelter of the
western hills, drawing farther away from their eastern enemies, they
were forced to a nearer approach to the ranch house, to run the gantlet
of its concealed sharp-shooters. A galloping horse, with its rider, does
not offer an easy mark; fifteen of them, the objective of twenty rifles,
form a better target. And when Mart Cooley's followers reached the
shadows of the farther hills, they did not number fifteen, but eight.

It was into this party of flying horsemen that Injun and Whitey were
carried bodily. As darkness had come on, the boys had ridden cautiously
in the tracks of the advancing party. They had been attracted by the
sound of the shots, and approached as near as they dared, to witness the
battle. They were near the corner of the hill when the terrified horses
dashed toward them, and to avoid being run down they had spurred their
ponies ahead and were swept along with the flying riders.

Well, Mart Cooley had made the mistake of not figuring on the cleverness
of Donald Spellman, and the result of this was not only to make him
furious with himself, but to add to his, and to all the other men's
desire for revenge. All thoughts of starving the enemy out were lost,
absorbed in a lust for killing. The excited men paid no attention to the
boys. It is doubtful if they even saw them.

Mart took his forty-odd men back to the firs and scrub oaks at the lower
point of the western hills, and there they stretched out in the brush,
and prepared to bombard the ranch house. The moonlight was now Mart's
friend instead of his enemy. The sheepmen were divided. Those on the
hills would come in range of the cattlemen's rifles if they attempted to
cross the moonlit valley, and in the meantime they were harmless.

A number of volleys were fired into the house, not at the windows, but
beneath the window ledges. When men are besieged in a house they must
fire from the windows, kneelin