scurried for shelter.  Pasqual Morales, leading his men close under the north wall, made a panther-like spring for the crest of the barley parapet, and was saved from instant death when he fell by being dragged feet foremost, with a Colt’s forty-four tearing through his thigh.  In vain Moreno’s squad fired shot after shot through the wooden door; their bullets buried themselves deep in the improvised traverse but let no drop of blood, while two return shots scattered the attack with the splinters from the heavy panels.  Pleading, raging, maddened, Morales learned that the dash had failed, and that two of his most daring men, the two Americanos who had ridden forward to personate prospectors and who had led the rush in the southern front, were knocked out of the fight.

And then it was that the inhuman brute gave the order to resort to Indian methods, and even old Moreno begged and prayed and blasphemed all to no purpose.  Furious at their repulse, the band were ready to obey their leader’s maddest wish.  The word was “Burn them out.”  Ned Harvey, crouching behind his barley-bags, felt his blood turn to ice water in his veins when, with exultant yells and taunts, the corral suddenly lighted up with a broad red glare.  The match had been applied to the big hay-stack close to the brush-covered shed, close to the “leanto” under which so much inflammable rubbish was stored.  It could be a question of only a few moments, then they, too, would be a mass of flames spreading rapidly westward.  The stout adobe wall separating the ranch proper from the sheds would protect the occupants from direct contact with the flame, but what could save the roof?  Stretching from wall to wall were the dry, resinous pine logs that formed the basis of the bulky structure; over these the lighter boards of pine; and over all, thickly piled, dry as bone and inflammable as tinder, heap on heap of brush.  Once this was fairly ablaze the hapless occupants of the rooms beneath might as well be under the grating of some huge furnace.

High in air shot the leaping flames.  Far and wide over the desert spread the lurid glare.  Screaming with terror, the women of Moreno’s household were already dragging into the corral their few treasures and rushing back for such raiment as they could save.  Far over at the corral gate, where the bullets of the besieged could not find them, Pasqual Morales and his exulting band were gathered, the chief lying upon his serape with bloody bandages about his leg, his followers dancing about him in frantic glee, all keeping carefully out of range of the black door-ways, yet three or four crack shots lay flat in the sands, their rifles covering the now glaring fronts of the threatened rancho, ready to shoot down, Indian-like, the wretched garrison when driven out.

It was at this juncture that from somewhere in the middle room behind Moreno’s heavy door a voice was heard.

“Hand out the safe.  Hand out your money now and we’ll leave you in peace.  Every man of us will ride away, and you can come out as soon as we are gone.  Answer, for you have no time to lose.”