"

The call again sounded. Six Apaches leaped forward, and from the rock
that concealed the wounded warrior, a shot rang out in advance of the
first discharge from Lane's Winchester. The Indian's bullet scored the
top of the turret, and filled the eyes of the man behind it with
powdered stone. The prospector, already dazed by his wound, fired
wildly, and missed his mark. Quickly recovering himself, he fired again
and again, severely wounding two Apaches. These lay clawing the ground
within twenty yards of the wall. The four remaining Indians were
safely concealed at the same distance, protected no less by the
fortification than by the loose boulders behind which they crouched for
the final spring. Lane realized the fact that his next shots, to be
effective, must be at a downward angle, and to fire them he must expose
himself.

"This is my finish," he thought to himself. "Better be killed
instantly than tortured. I hope all four will hit me. Good-by,
Jinny"--CRACK! went his rifle. "Good-by, Nance"--CRACK! again.

At the two shots, surmising that the prospector had shot himself and
his horse, the Apaches did not wait for the signal, but sprang forward
and climbed upon the wall before Lane had had time to mount it. Two of
them he shot as they leaped down within the enclosure. As he reversed
his Winchester to kill himself with the last cartridge, he noted that
the two remaining Apaches had dropped their rifles and were leaping
upon him to take him alive.

He brought his clubbed weapon down upon the head of one of them,
crushing his skull. At the same instant Lane was borne to the ground
by the other Apache, who, seizing him by the throat, began throttling
him into insensibility. In desperation, Lane bethought himself of the
cliff, and, by a mighty effort, whirled over upon his captor toward the
precipice. The ground sloped slightly in that direction, and the
combatants rolled over and over to the very edge of the cliff, where
the Indian, for the first time realizing that the prospector's purpose
was to hurl both of them to destruction, loosened his hold upon the
prospector's throat that he might use his hands to brace himself
against the otherwise inevitable plunge into the valley below. In an
instant Lane's hands were at the Indian's throat, and in another turn
he was uppermost, and kneeling upon his foe at the very verge of the
precipice.

Both combatants were now thoroughly exhausted. Lane concentra