“But he may want the sentence carried out some time, if he changes his mind. Maybe in a week or two he may take a notion that—” She stopped, plainly sobered by the fear that the good news of his return might not be final. “We won’t cross that bridge till we come to it. You don’t suppose our friends are going to sit down and fold their hands, do you? Not if I’ve got Mike O’Halloran and young Valdez sized up right. Fur is going to begin to fly pretty soon in this man’s country. But it’s up to us to help all we can, and I reckon we’ll begin by taking a preliminary survey of this wickiup.” Wickiup was distinctly good, since the word is used to apply to a frail Indian hut, and this cell was nothing less than a tomb built in the solid rock by blowing out a chamber with dynamite and covering the front with a solid sheet of iron, into which a door fitted. It did not take a very long investigation to prove to Bucky that escape was impossible by any exit except the door, which meant the same thing as impossible at all under present conditions. Yet he did not yield to this opinion without going over every inch of the walls many times to make sure that no secret panel opened into a tunnel from the room. “I reckon they want to keep us, Curly. Mr. Megales has sure got us real safe this time. I’d be plumb discouraged about breaking jail out of this cage. It’s ce’tainly us to stay hitched a while.” About dark tortillas and frijoles were brought down to them by the facetious turnkey, who was accompanied as usual by two guards. “Why don’t my little birdies sing?” he asked, with a wink at the soldiers. “One of them will not do any singing after daybreak to-morrow. Ho, ho, my larks! Tune up, tune up!” “What do you mean about one not singing after daybreak?” asked the girl, with eyes dilating. “What! Hasn’t he told you? Señor the ranger is to be hanged at the dawn unless he finds his tongue for Governor Megales. Ho, ho! Our birdie must speak even if he doesn’t sing.” And with that as a parting shot the man clanged the door to after him and locked it. “You never told me, Bucky. You have been trying to deceive me,” she groaned. He shrugged his shoulders. “What was the use, girlie? I knew it would worry you, and do no good. Better let you sleep in peace, I thought.” “While you kept watch alone and waited through the long night. Oh, Bucky!” She crept close to him and put her arms around his neck, holding him tight, as if in the hope that she could keep him against the untoward fate that was reaching for him. “Oh, Bucky, if I could only die for you!” “Don’t give up, little friend. I don’t. Somehow I’ll slip out, and then you’ll have to live for me and not die for me.” “What is it that the governor wants you to say that you won’t?” “Oh, he wants me to sell our friends. I told him to go climb a giant cactus.” “Of course you couldn’t do that,” she sighed regretfully. He laughed. “Well, hardly, and call myself a white man.”