of an Indian shrug over a negligible quantity. It
started Prather on all fours laboriously toward him.

"I am going to the turn in the _arroyo_ that commands the next turn,"
Jack explained. "When I whistle you empty your magazines. Keep your heads
down and fire fast, no matter if not accurately, so as to disturb their
aim at me!"

"_Si_!" said Firio. "I know!" No one could deny that he was having a very
good time making war in the company of Senor Jack. "Yes, Mister Prather,"
he added, when, after toiling painfully on his belly for the few feet he
had to go, Prather lay with his stark face near Firio's; a face strangely
like that of John Wingfield, Sr. when he saw Jasper Ewold from the
drawing-room doorway. "For your life, Mister Prather! _Si_! Up a little
more! Chin high as mine, so! Eye on sight, so!"

Prather obeyed in an abyssmal sort of shame which, for the time being,
conquered his fear, though not his palsy; for his rifle barrel trembled
on its rest.

Meanwhile, Jack had crept to the bend in the _arroyo_. He was listening.
It would not do to show his head as a warning of his presence. Faintly he
heard men moving in the sand, moving slowly and cautiously. At the moment
he chose as the right one, with rifle cocked and finger on trigger, he
gave his signal. Then he sprang to the top of the bank, fully exposed to
the marksmen at the water-hole. For no half measure would do. He must
have a full view of the bottom of the next bend. There he saw two
crawling figures. He fired twice and dropped down with three or four
stinging whispers in his ears and a second volley overhead as he was
under cover. Again he sprang up over the bank in the temptation to see
the result of his aim. One of the would-be flankers lay prostrate and
still, face downward. The other was disappearing beyond the second bend.

"Seven, now!" he thought miserably, in comprehension of the whole
business as ridicule in human savagery. "They won't trouble us again
immediately. They will wait on darkness and thirst," he concluded; and
called, as he turned back, to Firio: "It worked like a charm, O son of
the sun! They could not fire at all straight with your bullets flying
about their heads, disturbing their--" His speech ended at sight of
Prather, half rolling, half tumbling down the slope, his hands over his
face, while he uttered a prolonged moan.

"Bullet hit a rock under sand!" said Firio, as Jack hastened to assist
Prather, who had come to a hal