For a little longer his reluctance to abandon her even
temporarily held him in quandary, then realizing that it offered the
only hope, he seized her fingers in a tight grasp and whispered:

"Farewell--then. God be with ye twell I gits back."

He worked his way along a twisting passage hitherto known only to
spiders and bats until at length he could see a yellow shred of
westering sky through a narrow rent in the blackness. As he edged his
body through the rift he heard a rifle shot reverberating brokenly
through the twisting tunnels, followed by a dogged spatter of
response--or was it only echo? He ground his teeth and poised himself
precariously on a foothold, inches wide, and treacherously insecure. He
measured the distance to a hickory branch that the wind rocked and
between its support and himself was emptiness. The scaly bark of the
limb for which he must leap was near the top of a tree whose roots were
planted fifty feet lower.

Turner gathered his muscles into elastic readiness--and plunged
outward. There was an instant of terrific uncertainty, then he swung
pendulum-like, upon a support that sagged and gave under his weight as
he hooked his knees about the branch and drank in a deep breath of
thanksgiving.

Blossom, kneeling unseen and partly protected by a sandstone barricade,
had been peering out at the broken gulches which were already filling
with a dusky gray. She must keep those alley ways clear and there were
two of them. A twilight depression gnawed at her heart.

Finally she saw a furtive and leering face thrust slowly and cautiously
around the angle of stone. Her pulses pounded, but her rifle was
trained, and her hands unshaking. For the first time since Henderson's
murder, something like a thrill warmed her veins. Now she could hit
back and avenge and take a man's chance of death in doing it. Then the
man, bent on reconnaissance, ventured a forward step. He had not come
quite far enough to see the opening itself though he knew that it must
be hidden somewhere among those bowlders. He peered with lynx-like
eagerness--ready to leap back if need be--and Blossom pressed her
trigger. Without a groan the figure wilted down and lay in grotesque
shapelessness between the rocks.

The fusillade which came in response was random and ineffective, and
the girl, nerved to battle, found the long and anxious silence which
ensued a purgatory of suspense. At the end she knew they would attempt
to overwhelm defen