“I see,” he said slowly.  “All right.  Although I’d like to know—­”

“Good-morning,” said Aggie, and kicked her horse to go on.

I shall never forget Tish’s face.  Round the next bend she got off her horse and confronted Aggie.

[Illustration:  “The older I get, Aggie Pilkington, the more I realize that to take you anywhere means ruin.”]

“The older I get, Aggie Pilkington,” she said, “the more I realize that to take you anywhere means ruin.  We are done now.  All our labor is for nothing.  There will be no holdup, no nothing.  They are scared off.”

But Aggie was still angry.  “Just let some one take you for a lousy Bedouin, Tish,” she said, “and see what you would do.  I’m not sorry anyhow.  I never did like the idea.”

But Tish dislikes relinquishing an idea, once it has taken hold.  And, although she did not speak to Aggie again for the next hour, she went ahead with her preparations.

“There’s still a chance, Lizzie,” she said.  “It’s not likely they’ll give up easy, on account of hiring the Indians and everything.”

About a mile and a half down the trail, she picked out a place to hide.  This time there was a cave.  We cleared our saddles for action, as Tish proposed to let them escape past us with the girl, and then to follow them rapidly, stealing upon them if possible while they were at luncheon, and covering them with the one real revolver and the three wooden ones.

The only thing that bothered us was Bill’s attitude.  He kept laughing to himself and muttering, and when he was storing things in the cave, Tish took me aside.

“I don’t like his attitude, Lizzie,” she said.  “He’s likely to giggle or do something silly, just at the crucial moment.  I cannot understand why he thinks it is funny, but he does.  We’d be much better without him.”

“You’d better talk to him, Tish,” I said.  “You can’t get rid of him now.”

But to tell Tish she cannot do a thing is to determine her to do it.

It was still early, only half-past eight, when she came to me with an eager face.

“I’ve got it, Lizzie,” she said.  “I’ll send off Mona Lisa, and he will have to search for her.  The only thing is, she won’t move unless she’s driven.  If we could only find a hornet’s nest again, we could manage.  It may be cruel, but I understand that a hornet’s sting is not as painful to a horse as to a human being.”

Mona Lisa, I must explain, was the pack-horse.  Tish had changed her name from Jane to Mona Lisa because in the mornings she was constantly missing, and having to be looked for.

Tish disappeared for a time, and we settled down to our long wait.  Bill put another coat of stove polish on the weapons, and broke now and then into silent laughter.  On my giving him a haughty glance, however, he became sober and rubbed with redoubled vigor.

In a half-hour, however, I saw Tish beckoning to me from a distance, and I went to her.  I soon saw that she was holding her handkerchief to one cheek, but when I mentioned the fact she ignored me.