The man from the Panhandle looked across the desert that palpitated with heat, and saw through the marvelous atmosphere the smoke of the ore-mills curling upward.  He was no tenderfoot, to suppose that ten minutes’ brisk walking would take him to them.  He guessed the distance at about two and a half hour’s travel.

“This is ce’tainly a hot evening.  I expect we better wait till sundown before moving,” he said aloud.

Having made up his mind, it was characteristic of him that he was asleep again in five minutes.  This time she wakened before him, to look into a wonderful sea of gold that filled the crotches of the hills between the purple teeth.  No sun was to be seen—­ it had sunk behind the peaks—­ but the trail of its declension was marked by that great pool of glory into which she gazed.

Margaret crossed the wash to the cottonwood under which her escort was lying.  He was fast asleep on his back, his gray shirt open at the bronzed, sinewy neck.  The supple, graceful lines of him were relaxed, but even her inexperience appreciated the splendid shoulders and the long rippling muscles.  The maidenly instinct in her would allow but one glance at him, and she was turning away when his eyes opened.

Her face, judging from its tint, might have absorbed some of the sun-glow into which she had been gazing.

“I came to see if you were awake,” she explained.

“Yes, ma’am, I am,” he smiled.

“I was thinking that we ought to be going.  It will be dark before we reach Mal Pais.”

He leaped to his feet and faced her.

“C’rect.”

“Are you hungry?”

“Yes.”

He relit the fire and put on the coffee-pot before he saddled the horse.  She ate and drank hurriedly, soon announcing herself ready for the start.

She mounted from his hand; then without asking any questions he swung to a place behind her.

“We’ll both ride,” he said.

The stars were out before they reached the outskirts of the mining-camp.  At the first house of the rambling suburbs Neill slipped to the ground and walked beside her toward the old adobe plaza of the Mexican town

People passed them on the run, paying no attention to them, and others dribbled singly or in small groups from the houses and saloons.  All of them were converging excitedly to the plaza.

“Must be something doing here,” said her guide.  “Now I wonder what!”

Round the next turn he found his answer.  There must have been present two or three hundred men, mostly miners, and their gazes all focussed on two figures which stood against a door at the top of five or six steps.  One of the forms was crouched on its knees, abject, cringing terror stamped on the white villainous face upturned to the electric light above.  But the other was on its feet, a revolver in each hand, a smile of reckless daring on the boyish countenance that just now stood for law and order in Mal Pais.