“Bridge!” he exclaimed.  “What brings you back here?  Don’t you know that you endanger us as well as yourself by being seen here?  General Villa will think that we have been harboring you.”

Bridge swung from the saddle and ran up onto the veranda.  He paid not the slightest attention to Anthony Harding’s protest.

“How many men you got here that you can depend on?” he asked.

“None,” replied the Easterner.  “What do you mean?”

“None!” cried Bridge, incredulity and hopelessness showing upon his countenance.  “Isn’t there a Chinaman and a couple of faithful Mexicans?”

“Oh, yes, of course,” assented Mr. Harding; “but what are you driving at?”

“Pesita is on his way here to clean up El Orobo.  He can’t be very far behind me.  Call the men you got, and we’ll get together all the guns and ammunition on the ranch, and barricade the ranchhouse.  We may be able to stand ’em off.  Have you heard anything of Miss Barbara?”

Anthony Harding shook his head sadly.

“Then we’ll have to stay right here and do the best we can,” said Bridge.  “I was thinking we might make a run for it if Miss Barbara was here; but as she’s not we must wait for those who went out after her.”

Mr. Harding summoned the two Mexicans while Bridge ran to the cookhouse and ordered the Chinaman to the ranchhouse.  Then the erstwhile bookkeeper ransacked the bunkhouse for arms and ammunition.  What little he found he carried to the ranchhouse, and with the help of the others barricaded the doors and windows of the first floor.

“We’ll have to make our fight from the upper windows,” he explained to the ranch owner.  “If Pesita doesn’t bring too large a force we may be able to stand them off until you can get help from Cuivaca.  Call up there now and see if you can get Villa to send help—­he ought to protect you from Pesita.  I understand that there is no love lost between the two.”

Anthony Harding went at once to the telephone and rang for the central at Cuivaca.

“Tell it to the operator,” shouted Bridge who stood peering through an opening in the barricade before a front window; “they are coming now, and the chances are that the first thing they’ll do is cut the telephone wires.”

The Easterner poured his story and appeal for help into the ears of the girl at the other end of the line, and then for a few moments there was silence in the room as he listened to her reply.

“Impossible!” and “My God! it can’t be true,” Bridge heard the older man ejaculate, and then he saw him hang up the receiver and turn from the instrument, his face drawn and pinched with an expression of utter hopelessness.

“What’s wrong?” asked Bridge.

“Villa has turned against the Americans,” replied Harding, dully.  “The operator evidently feels friendly toward us, for she warned me not to appeal to Villa and told me why.  Even now, this minute, the man has a force of twenty-five hundred ready to march on Columbus, New Mexico.  Three Americans were hanged in Cuivaca this afternoon.  It’s horrible, sir!  It’s horrible!  We are as good as dead this very minute.  Even if we stand off Pesita we can never escape to the border through Villa’s forces.”