“I reckon so, an’ I reckon the ball’s opened,” rejoined Lash, and now that former nervous impatience so unnatural to him was as if it had never been.  He was smilingly cool, and his voice had almost a caressing note.  He tapped the breech of his Winchester with a sinewy brown hand, and he did not appear to be addressing any one in particular.  “Yaqui’s opened the ball.  Look up your pardners there, gents, an’ get ready to dance.”

Another wait set in then, and judging by the more direct rays of the sun and a receding of the little shadows cast by the choyas, Gale was of the opinion that it was a long wait.  But it seemed short.  The four men were lying under the bank of a half circular hole in the lava.  It was notched and cracked, and its rim was fringed by choyas.  It sloped down and opened to an unobstructed view of the crater.  Gale had the upper position, fartherest to the right, and therefore was best shielded from possible fire from the higher ridges of the rim, some three hundred yards distant.  Jim came next, well hidden in a crack.  The positions of Thorne and Ladd were most exposed.  They kept sharp lookout over the uneven rampart of their hiding-place.

The sun passed the zenith, began to slope westward, and to grow hotter as it sloped.  The men waited and waited.  Gale saw no impatience even in Thorne.  The sultry air seemed to be laden with some burden or quality that was at once composed of heat, menace, color, and silence.  Even the light glancing up from the lava seemed red and the silence had substance.  Sometimes Gale felt that it was unbearable.  Yet he made no effort to break it.

Suddenly this dead stillness was rent by a shot, clear and stinging, close at hand.  It was from a rifle, not a carbine.  With startling quickness a cry followed—­a cry that pierced Gale—­it was so thin, so high-keyed, so different from all other cries.  It was the involuntary human shriek at death.

“Yaqui’s called out another pardner,” said Jim Lash, laconically.

Carbines began to crack.  The reports were quick, light, like sharp spats without any ring.  Gale peered from behind the edge of his covert.  Above the ragged wave of lava floated faint whitish clouds, all that was visible of smokeless powder.  Then Gale made out round spots, dark against the background of red, and in front of them leaped out small tongues of fire.  Ladd’s .405 began to “spang” with its beautiful sound of power.  Thorne was firing, somewhat wildly Gale thought.  Then Jim Lash pushed his Winchester over the rim under a choya, and between shots Gale could hear him singing:  “Turn the lady, turn—­turn the lady, turn!...Alaman left!...Swing your pardners!...Forward an’ back!...Turn the lady, turn!” Gale got into the fight himself, not so sure that he hit any of the round, bobbing objects he aimed at, but growing sure of himself as action liberated something forced and congested within his breast.