e poison-sacs cut outa them. They must a-had. Gee! It's
funny I can't get asleep. I wish that damned thing'd close its trap. I
wonder if it is a rattlesnake."

"No; it can't be," Saxon decided. "All the rattlesnakes are killed off
long ago."

"Then where did Bosco get his?" Billy demanded with unimpeachable logic.
"An' why don't you get to sleep?"

"Because it's all new, I guess," was her reply. "You see, I never camped
out in my life."

"Neither did I. An' until now I always thought it was a lark." He
changed his position on the maddening sand and sighed heavily. "But
we'll get used to it in time, I guess. What other folks can do, we can,
an' a mighty lot of 'em has camped out. It's all right. Here we are,
free an' independent, no rent to pay, our own bosses--"

He stopped abruptly. From somewhere in the brush came an intermittent
rustling. When they tried to locate it, it mysteriously ceased, and
when the first hint of drowsiness stole upon them the rustling as
mysteriously recommenced.

"It sounds like something creeping up on us," Saxon suggested, snuggling
closer to Billy.

"Well, it ain't a wild Indian, at all events," was the best he could
offer in the way of comfort. He yawned deliberately. "Aw, shucks! What's
there to be scared of? Think of what all the pioneers went through."

Several minutes later his shoulders began to shake, and Saxon knew he
was giggling.

"I was just thinkin' of a yarn my father used to tell about," he
explained. "It was about old Susan Kleghorn, one of the Oregon pioneer
women. Wall-Eyed Susan, they used to call her; but she could shoot to
beat the band. Once, on the Plains, the wagon train she was in, was
attacked by Indians. They got all the wagons in a circle, an' all hands
an' the oxen inside, an' drove the Indians off, killin' a lot of 'em.
They was too strong that way, so what'd the Indians do, to draw 'em out
into the open, but take two white girls, captured from some other train,
an' begin to torture 'em. They done it just out of gunshot, but so
everybody could see. The idea was that the white men couldn't stand it,
an' would rush out, an' then the Indians'd have 'em where they wanted
'em.

"The white men couldn't do a thing. If they rushed out to save the
girls, they'd be finished, an' then the Indians'd rush the train. It
meant death to everybody. But what does old Susan do, but get out an
old, long-barreled Kentucky rifle. She rams down about three times the
regu