this game if Emerson can play
his."

"Don't you worry about Emerson. He's ready to ride the devil through
hell to get back to his round-up."

The next morning Nick Ellhorn hunted up the Mexican who worked the
garden behind the jail and talked through the enclosure with the old
man, who was crippled and half blind. Ellhorn talked with him about
the garden and finally said he would like to eat some onions. The
Mexican pulled a bunch of young green ones for him, and he sat down on
a bench under a peach tree near the wall of the jail-court to eat
them. He sent the Mexican back to his hut for some salt, and at once
began whistling loudly the air of "Bonnie Dundee." Presently he broke
into the words of the song and woke the echoes round about, as he and
Emerson Mead had done on many a night around the camp-fire on the
range:

"Come fill up my cup, come fill up my can,
Come saddle my horse and call out my men."

There he stopped and waited, and in a moment a baritone voice on the
other side of the wall took up the song:

"Come ope the west port and let us go free
To follow the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee!"

Ellhorn went on singing as he threw one of his onions, then another,
over the wall. One of them came sailing back and fell beside the
peach tree. Then he took a slip of folded paper from his pocket, tied
it to another onion and sent it over the cactus-crowned adobe. The
Mexican returned with the salt and they sat down together under the
tree, chatting sociably. Presently Mead's voice came floating out from
behind the wall in the stirring first lines of the old Scotch ballad:

"To the lords of convention, 'twas Claverhouse spoke:
'If there are heads to be crowned, there are heads to be broke!'"

Nick chuckled, winked at the old Mexican, and hurried off to find
Tuttle.

That evening, soon after the full darkness of night had mantled the
earth, Nick Ellhorn and Tommy Tuttle rode toward the jail, leading an
extra horse. Ellhorn gave Tuttle a lariat.

"You'd better manage this part," he said in a low tone. "My arm's not
strong enough yet to be depended on in such ticklish matters. I tried
it to-day with my gun, and it's mighty near as steady as ever for
shooting, but I won't risk it on this."

They rode into the Mexican's garden and Ellhorn stood with the extra
horse under the drooping branches of the peach tree. They listened and
heard the sound of a soft whistling in the _patio_, as if