They had moved forward for perhaps a dozen yards, the obedient pony stepping as silently as themselves, Mercedes a foot or two to the rear, when Brown suddenly halted, staring fixedly at something slightly at one side of their path. There, like a huge baleful eye glaring angrily at him, appeared a dull red glow. An instant he doubted, wondered, his mind confused. Tiny sparks sputtered out into the darkness, and the miner understood. He had blindly stumbled upon a lighted fuse, a train of destruction leading to some deed of hell. With an oath he leaped recklessly forward, stamping the creeping flame out beneath his feet, crushing it lifeless between his heavy boots and the rock. There was an angry shout, the swift rush of feet, the red flare of a rifle cleaving the night with burst of flame. In the sudden, unearthly glare Brown caught dim sight of faces, of numerous dark figures leaping toward him, but he merely crouched low. The girl! he must protect the girl! That was all he knew, all he considered, excepting a passionate hatred engendered by one of those faces he had just seen. They were upon him in mass, striking, tearing like so many wild beasts in the first fierceness of attack. His revolver jammed in its holster, but he struck out with clenched fists, battering at the black figures, his teeth ground together, his every instinct bidding him fight hard till he died. Once they pounded him to his knees, but he struggled up, shaking loose their gripping hands, and hurling them back like so many children. He was crazed by then with raging battle-fury, his hot blood lusting, every great muscle strained to the uttermost. He realized nothing, saw nothing, but those dim figures facing him; insensible to the blood trickling down the front of his shirt, unconscious of wound, he flung himself forward a perfect madman, jerking a rifle from the helpless fingers of an opponent, and smiting to right and left, the deadly-iron bar whirling through the air. He struck once, twice; he saw bodies whirl sidewise and fall to the ground. Then suddenly he seemed alone, panting fiercely, the smashed rifle-stock uplifted for a blow. "It's the big fellow," roared a voice at his left. "Why don't you fools shoot?" He sprang backward, crouching lower, his one endeavor to draw their fire, so as to protect her lying hidden among the rock shadows. He felt nothing except contempt for those fellows, but he could not let them hurt her. He stood up full in the starlight, shading his eyes in an attempt to see. Somebody cried, "There he is, damn him!" A slender figure swept flying across the open space like some dim night vision. A red flame leaped forth from the blackness. The two stood silhouetted against the glare, reeled backward as it faded, and went down together in the dark. CHAPTER XXVI BENEATH THE DARKNESS