He peered out again instantly, to see that the man was lying doubled across the fallen tree trunk, his rifle having dropped, muzzle down, in some bushes below him.

Sanderson heard Williams’ voice, raised in savage exultation: 

“Nip my ear, will you—­yon measly son-of-a-gun!  I’ll show you!

“Got him with my pistol!” he yelled to one of the Double A men near him.  “Come on out and fight like men, you miserable whelps!”

The young engineer’s fighting blood was up—­that was plain to Sanderson.  Sanderson grinned, yielded to a solemn hope that Williams would not get reckless and expose himself needlessly, and began to examine the walls of the fissure to determine on a new offensive movement.

He was interrupted, though, by another shout from Williams.

“Got him!” yelled the engineer; “plumb in the beezer!”

Sanderson peered out, to see the body of a man come tumbling down the opposite wall of the defile.

“That’s all on this side!” Williams informed the others, shouting.  “Now let’s get at the guys on the other side and salivate them!”

Again Sanderson grinned at the engineer’s enthusiasm.  That enthusiasm was infectious, for Sanderson heard some of the other men laughing.  The laughing indicated that they now entertained a hope of ultimate victory—­a hope which they could not have had before Williams and Sanderson had disposed of the enemies at their rear.

Sanderson, too, was imbued with a spirit of enthusiasm.  He began to climb the walls of the crevice, finding the ragged rock projections admirably convenient for footing.

However, his progress was slow, for he had to be careful not to let his head show above the edge of the rock that formed the fissure; and so he was busily engaged for the greater part of half an hour before he finally reached a position from which he thought he could get a glimpse of the men on his side of the defile.

Meanwhile there had been no sound from the bottom, or the other side of the defile, except an occasional report of a rifle, which told that Dale’s men were firing, or the somewhat more crashing report of a pistol, which indicated that his own men were replying.

From where he crouched in the fissure, Sanderson could see some of the horses at the bottom of the defile.  They were grazing unconcernedly.  Scattered along the bottom of the defile were the men who had fallen at the first fire, and Sanderson’s eye glinted with rage when he looked at them; for he recognized some of them as men of the outfit for whom he had conceived a liking.  Two of Williams’ men were lying there, too, and Sanderson’s lips grimmed as he looked at them.

Thoroughly aroused now, Sanderson replaced the empty cartridges in the rifle with loaded ones, and, finding a spot between two small boulders, he shoved the muzzle of the rifle through.

He had no fear of being shot at from the rear, for the men had permitted him to go far enough through the defile to allow the others following him to come into range before they opened fire.