s beyond his range of sight.
His fear was that one of them might steal alongside the cave and
leap unexpectedly into its very mouth upon him, so with taut nerves
he crouched expectant.

Behind him Arlee gave a sudden shriek.

[Illustration: "Billy went to the mouth, peering watchfully out"]

CHAPTER XX

A FRIEND IN NEED

He whirled. "I'll fire!" he warned, staring into the dark, but his
eyes, dazed with the sun, discerned nothing, and in utter ignorance
he faced the black possibilities.

"A man--a hand----" Arlee gasped incoherently.

"Good Lord, what is it?" said a voice so near at hand that both were
startled.

"Burroughs!" ejaculated Billy. "Is it you--Burroughs?"

"Yes, it's I, Burroughs," the owner of the voice retorted irritably.
"And who the deuce are you?"

"Hill--Billy B. Hill," came the jubilant answer, and "Billy be
damned!" said the astonished voice, with sudden joviality, and a
dark shape strode up to them. "What on earth are you doing here? And
what about that firing? Think I was a robber bold?"

"Well, there are three robber sneaks outside that we are hiding
from, so I wasn't sure.... Great Caesar, old scout, but I'm glad to
see you! That puts us out of the woods at last.... It's the
excavator friend," he added, turning to Arlee. "Burroughs, I present
you to Miss Beecher. She and I have been having a thoroughly
impossible adventure."

"Let's have a little light upon these introductions," returned the
excavator, and a click was heard, and a light jumped out overhead,
flooding the tunnel-like place with brightness. In its beams the
three stood staring queerly at each other.

Arlee saw a slim, wiry young American, in rough khaki clothes
stained with work, a browned, unshaven young man with sleepy looking
eyes and a mouth like a steel trap.

What the excavator saw was more surprising. There was his friend
Billy, whom two weeks before he had seen off on a Nile steamer
returning to Cairo, in tropic splendor of white serge and Panama
hat, now a scarlet spectacle of sunburn and dirt, in most
disgraceful tweeds, and beside him what Burroughs took to be a child
in tatterdemalion white, a silky, fluttering white, which even his
untrained observation knew was hardly elected for desert wear. The
little girl's hair was hanging tangled over her shoulders, and was
much the color of the sand with which her face was coated, and
underneath that coating he saw that she was red as a peony with su