“Thank me for that, Armitage.  I tumbled down a good many yards of it when I played up here as a kid.  Get off that horse, I tell you!  You’ve got a hole in you now!  Get down!”

“You make me tired, Claiborne.  This beautiful row will all be over in a few minutes.  I never intended to waste much time on those fellows when I got them where I wanted them.”

His left arm hung quite limp at his side and his face was very white.  He had dropped his rifle in the road at the moment the ball struck his shoulder, but he still carried his revolver.  He nodded to Oscar, and they both galloped forward over the open ground, making straight for the cedar covert.

Claiborne was instantly up and away between the two riders.  Their bold advance evidently surprised the trio beyond the barricade, who shouted hurried commands to one another as they distributed themselves along the wall and awaited the onslaught.  Then they grew still and lay low out of sight as the silent riders approached.  The hoofs of the onrushing horses rang now and then on the harsh outcropping rock, and here and there struck fire.  Armitage sat erect and steady in his saddle, his horse speeding on in great bounds toward the barricade.  His lips moved in a curious stiff fashion, as though he were ill, muttering: 

“For Austria!  For Austria!  He bade me do something for the Empire!”

Beyond the cedars the trio held their fire, watching with fascinated eyes the two riders, every instant drawing closer, and the runner who followed them.

“They can’t jump this—­they’ll veer off before they get here,” shouted Chauvenet to his comrades.  “Wait till they check their horses for the turn.”

“We are fools.  They have got us trapped;” and Durand’s hands shook as he restlessly fingered a revolver.  The big Servian crouched on his knees near by, his finger on the trigger of his rifle.  All three were hatless and unkempt.  The wound in Zmai’s scalp had broken out afresh, and he had twisted a colored handkerchief about it to stay the bleeding.  A hundred yards away the waterfall splashed down the defile and its faint murmur reached them.  A wild dove rose ahead of Armitage and flew straight before him over the barricade.  The silence grew tense as the horses galloped nearer; the men behind the cedar-lined wall heard only the hollow thump of hoofs and Claiborne’s voice calling to Armitage and Oscar, to warn them of his whereabouts.

But the eyes of the three conspirators were fixed on Armitage; it was his life they sought; the others did not greatly matter.  And so John Armitage rode across the little plain where the Lost Legion had camped for a year at the end of a great war; and as he rode on the defenders of the boulder barricade saw his white face and noted the useless arm hanging and swaying, and felt, in spite of themselves, the strength of his tall erect figure.

Chauvenet, watching the silent rider, said aloud, speaking in German, so that Zmai understood: