He smiled at her.  “If all that happened, you are quite right; he would be about due to arrive.  I suppose, being a Westerner, that the first thing he would do in the village would be to hire a horse to take him out here, and he would come galloping yonder, where you see that white road tossing over the hills.”

“And what if he does come?” she asked.

“Then,” said John Mark very gravely, “he will indeed be in serious danger.  It will be the third time that he has threatened me.  And the third time—­”

“You’ve prepared even for his coming here?” she asked, the thought tightening the muscles of her throat.

“When you have such a man as Ronicky Doone on your hands,” he confessed, “you have to be ready for anything.  Yes, I have prepared.  If he comes he’ll come by the straightest route, certain that we don’t expect him.  He’ll run blindly into the trap.  Yonder—­you see where the two hills almost close over the road—­yonder is Shorty Kruger behind the rocks, waiting and watching.  A very good gunman is Shorty.  Know him?”

“Yes,” she said, shuddering.  “Of course I know him.”

“But even suppose that the he passes Kruger—­down there in the hollow, where the road bends in toward us, you can see Lefty himself.  I wired him to come, and there he is.”

“Lefty?” asked the girl, aghast.

“Lefty himself,” said John Mark.  “You see how much I respect Ronicky Doone’s fighting properties?  Yes, Lefty himself, the great, the infallible Lefty!”

She turned her back on the white road which led from the village and faced the sea.

“If we are down here long enough,” he said, “I’ll have a little wharf built inside that cove.  You see?  Then we can bring up a motor boat and anchor it in there.  Do you know much about boats?”

“Almost nothing.”

“That’s true, but we’ll correct it.  Between you and me, if I had to choose between a boat and a horse I don’t know which I should—­”

Two sharp detonations cut off his words.  While he raised a startled hand for silence they remained staring at one another, and the long, faint echoes rolled across the hills.

“A revolver shot first, far off,” he said, “and then a rifle shot.  That metallic clang always means a rifle shot.”

He turned, and she turned with him.  Covering their eyes from the white light of the sun they peered at the distant road, where, as he had pointed out, the two hills leaned together and left a narrow footing between.

“The miracle has happened,” said John Mark in a perfectly sober voice.  “It is Ronicky Doone!”

Chapter Twenty-seven

The Last Stand

At the same instant she saw what his keener eye had discerned the moment before.  A small trail of dust was blowing down the road, just below the place where the two hills leaned together.  Under it was the dimly discernible, dust-veiled form of a horseman riding at full speed.