look to the glasses of
these gentlemen."

The deal was finished. Culvera opened the pot. The captain stayed.
Ochampa hesitated.

One shot, a second, and then a fusillade of them shattered the quiet.

Pasquale flung down his cards and rose hurriedly, overturning his chair.
"Mil diablos! What's to pay?" he cried.

The others followed him out of the room and house. He ran down the
street as fast as a boy. Already men were emerging from houses half
dressed. The sound of shots came from back of the general's
headquarters. Pasquale doubled around the house and vaulted a fence. He
butted into an excited group and flung men to right and left.

"What's the matter?" he demanded.

A soldier pointed to the open window of the room that had been occupied
by Ruth Seymour. "She's gone, Your Excellency."

"Gone! Gone where?" roared Gabriel.

"Heaven knows. Her friends have rescued her."

Pasquale broke into a storm of curses.

CHAPTER XXIII

TRAPPED

After leaving Holcomb, Yeager walked down to the river-bed, followed the
bank for a couple of hundred yards, and crept forward on all fours
through the alfalfa pasture to the barb-wire fence that paralleled the
road at some distance. He crawled beneath the lowest wire and moved
through the mesquite to a point from which he could see the building
where Farrar and Threewit were held prisoners. Two guards with rifles
across their shoulders paced up and down outside.

Here Steve lay motionless for about half an hour. He believed that
before the poker game began some one of the party would drop around to
see that all was quiet and regular in the camp. His guess was a good
one. Pasquale himself, arm in arm with Ochampa, made the rounds and
stopped for a moment to speak to the sentries in front of the prison.
The man crouched in the bear grass could tell that Gabriel was in high
good-humor. He jested with the men and clapped them on the shoulder
jovially. He laughed as heartily at his own witticisms as they did.

"There shall be mescal to-morrow for the whole army to drink the health
of the Liberator and his bride. See to it, Ochampa," he ordered as they
walked away.

"Viva Pasquale the Liberator," cried the sentries in a fine fervor of
enthusiasm.

Presently the man in hiding stole quietly to the road and advanced down
it at a leisurely pace.

"Promising them mescal, eh?" he murmured. "Well, I'll bet a bird in the
hand is worth twenty or most sixteen in the bush." H