cried Wellesly, whipping his
revolver from his pocket. The hammer fell with a flat thud, and with
an angry exclamation he clicked the trigger again. With furious haste
he went the round of the cylinder. Jim and Haney stood grinning at
him, their guns in their hands.

"Something the matter with your pop-gun, I reckon," said Jim.

Wellesly opened it and looked through the empty cylinder. Then he put
it carefully in his hip pocket, rested his hands on the pommel of his
saddle and looked the two men slowly over, first one and then the
other, from head to foot. At last he spoke:

"Well, whenever you are ready to make your proposition I will listen
to it."

"We 'aven't any proposition to make," Haney replied. "We're not ready
to leave 'ere yet, and we're not willing for you to risk your life
alone on the desert. That's all there is about it."

"Oh, very well! I can stay here as long as you can," Wellesly replied,
dismounting. He unsaddled his horse, hobbled it and turned it loose to
graze. Then he sat down in the shade of a tree, while the others still
held guard over the narrow pass. He had made up his mind that he would
not offer them money. He would watch his chance to outwit them, he
would match his intelligence against their cunning, his patience
against their brute force. It would be worth a week's captivity to
turn the tables on these two rogues and get back to civilization in
time to set at work the police machinery of a hundred cities, so that,
whatever way they might turn, there would be no escape for them. He
turned several schemes over in his mind as he watched Haney preparing
their noon meal of bread, coffee, beans and bacon. Jim was taking a
pebble from the shoe of one of the horses. Wellesly sauntered up and
watched the operation, asked some questions about the horses and
gradually led Jim into conversation. After a time he broke abruptly
into the talk with the question:

"What is the name of these mountains?"

"The Oro Fino," Jim answered promptly. Then he remembered that he and
Haney had been insisting that they were the Hermosas ever since the
day before and he stammered a little and added:

"That is, that's what the--the Mexicans call them. The Americans call
them the Hermosas."

"So you told me last night," Wellesly answered calmly, "but I had
forgotten."

He remembered the name and recalled a topographical map of the region
which he had looked at one day in Colonel Whittaker's office. He
re