well. I wakened from time to time
and I could hear Tish stirring next to me. At last I reached over and
touched her.

"Can't you sleep?" I whispered.

"Don't want to," she whispered back. "I've got it all fixed, Lizzie.
We'll take those outlaws back to the city, roped two by two."

It was a cool spring night, but I broke into a hot perspiration.

V

Tish began with Mr. Muldoon the next morning. He could not leave the
cave to carry up water, for daylight revealed another guard across the
valley and it was clear we were being watched. While Aggie and I went to
the spring Tish talked to him.

She told him that he had undertaken too much, single-handed, and that he
should have brought a posse with him. He agreed with her. He said he had
started with a posse, but that they had split up. Also he insisted that
but for his accident he could have managed easily.

"I'm up against it," he said, "and I know it. They'll get me yet. For
the last day or two they've been closing up round this cave, and in a
night or two they'll rush it. They've got their headquarters at that
farmhouse."

"The thing for you to do then," said Tish, "is to get out while there is
time. You can get help and come back."

"And leave you women here alone?"

"They're not after us," Tish replied, "and we've managed alone for a
good many years. I guess we'll get along."

But when she proposed her plan, which was that he should put on Aggie's
spare outfit and her sun veil and ride out of the valley on Modestine's
back in daylight, he objected. He said no outlaw worthy of the name
would fall for a thing like that, and he said he wouldn't wear skirts,
and that was all there was to it.

But in the end Tish prevailed, as usual.

"I'm going to the farmhouse this morning and I am going to say that one
of the ladies is leaving this afternoon and going back home. That will
be you. I wish you had a razor, but the veil will hide that. They'll not
molest you. You'll not only look like Aggie--you'll be Aggie."

Well, it seemed to be his best chance, although none of us dared to
think what might happen if the hat blew off or Aggie's gray alpaca
ripped at the seams.

We worked feverishly all day, letting out the dress and setting forward
the buttons on her raincoat. Mr. Muldoon was inclined to be sulky. He
sat at the back of the cave, playing solitaire and every now and then
examining the road maps. Aggie was depressed too. But, as Tish said,
getting rid o