iness in hand.

CHAPTER IX

THE ATTACK

So the three boys rolled into their blankets with the saddles for
pillows and dropped immediately to sleep as they were very tired from
the long, hard ride. They lay at different points around the fire, which
was allowed to die down as the fog seemed like a warm gray blanket over
the whole landscape.

Jo sat on a log by the slowly dying fire, with his rifle on his knees
looking into the darkness and not far from him lay the Mexican a mere
dark lump on the ground, apparently asleep, but keeping a wary eye on
all around. Imperceptibly he crept nearer to where Jo was sitting, but
he did not have the weapon he would have preferred in his hand, the
stiletto, which was as natural to him as the fangs to a rattlesnake.

But it did not suit the long-headed Captain Broom to have the boys
killed. He wanted their life as well as their money, but in a different
sense than the adage has it. From what he had heard of them, they were
boys of unusual mettle and varied acquirements. If caught young, he
could train them to good purpose. If they proved worthless, he would
hold them for ransom.

So Captain Broom had told Manuello briefly and to the point that there
was to be no rib-sticking and the Mexican would have thought as soon of
disobeying the commands of the Evil One as of going contrary to the
instructions of the Captain. So as he crept towards Jo, he held not a
poniard in his clenched hand, but a heavy weapon like a black-jack, made
of leather with a weight at the end.

Jo, however, spoiled his first attempt, for when the greaser had got
within striking distance, Jo got up and went down to the pool to get a
drink. If it had not been so dark, when they arrived, the boys would
have seen tracks around the pool that would have aroused their
suspicions. But everything seemed to work against them this time.

Jo stooped down at the brink and scarcely put his thirsty lips to the
water when some instinct of warning made him look quickly around and he
saw a small dark object directly back of him.

"Pardon, Senor, for startling you;" it was the voice of the dwarf, "but
I, too, was very thirsty. It is in the air."

"You needn't have been so quiet about it," said Jo, crossly. This little
rat always had a way of baffling and irritating him, because he did not
have Jim's force, which could beat down the dwarf when occasion demanded
it, or the stoicism of Juarez, which blocked the hunchb