“I will open that for you,” said The Spider.

“Never mind!” said one of the deputies; “the lady seems to know how.”

Boca took a glass from the counter.  “I will drink in the patio with my friends.”  But as she passed round the end of the bar and directly beneath the hanging lamp, she turned and paused.  “But no!  I will drink once to the young vaquero, with whom is my heart and my life.”  And she filled the glass and, bowing to Pete, put the glass to her lips.

The deputy nearest Pete shrugged his shoulder.  “This ain’t a show.”

“Of a truth, no!” said Boca, and she swung the bottle.  It shivered against the lamp.  With the instant darkness came a streak of red and the close roar of a shot.  Pete, with his gun out and going, leapt straight into the foremost deputy.  They crashed down.  Staggering to his feet, Pete broke for the outer doorway.  Behind him the room was a pit of flame and smoke.  Boca’s pony reared as Pete jerked the reins loose, swept into the saddle, and down the moonlit street.  He heard a shot and turned his head.  In the patch of moonlight round The Spider’s place he saw the dim, hurrying forms of men and horses.  He leaned forward and quirted the pony with the rein-ends.

[Illustration:  “Of a truth, no!” said Boca, and she swung the bottle.]

Back in The Spider’s place men grouped round a huddled something on the floor.  The Spider, who had fetched a lamp from his room, stooped and peered into the upturned face of Boca.  A dull, black ooze spread and spread across the floor.

“Boca!” he shrilled, and his face was hideous.

“Did them coyotes git her?”

“Who was it?”

“Where’s the kid?”

The Spider straightened and held the lamp high.  “Take her in there,” and he gestured toward his room.  Two of the men carried her to the couch and covered her with the folds of the serape which had slipped from her shoulders as she fell.

“Say the word, Spider, and we’ll ride ’em down!” It was “Scar-Face” who spoke, a man notorious even among his kind.

The Spider, strangely quiet, shook his head.  “They’ll ride back here.  They were after Young Pete.  She smashed the lamp to give him a chance to shoot his way out.  They figured he’d break for the back—­but he went right into ’em.  They don’t know yet that they got her.  And he don’t know it.”  He hobbled round to the back of the bar.  “Have a drink, boys, and then I’m going to close up till—­” and he indicated his room with a movement of the head.

Young Pete, riding into the night, listened for the sound of running horses.  Finally he pulled his pony to a walk.  He had ridden north—­up the trail which the posse had taken to Showdown, and directly away from where they were searching the desert for him.  And as Pete rode, he thought continually of Boca.  Unaware of what had happened—­yet he realized that she had been in great danger.