"No matter, dear. You're firing too hastily. Don't forget. Please rest a minute, and drink. You can bathe your eyes. It's hard, shooting across the hot sand. They'll bring others. We've no need to save water, you know." "I know," I admitted. We niggardly drank. I dabbled my burning eyes, cleared my sight. Of the fellow in the rifle pit there was no living token. The Sioux had ceased their gambols. They sat steadfast, again anticipative. A stillness, menaceful and brooding, weighted the landscape. She sighed. "Well?" The pregnant truce oppressed. What was hatching out, now? I cautiously shifted posture, to stretch and scan; instinctively groped for the canteen, to wet my lips again; a puff of smoke burst from the hollow, the canteen clinked, flew from my hand and went clattering among the rocks. "Oh!" she cried, aghast. "But you're not hurt?" Then--"I saw him. He'll come up again, in a moment. Be ready." The Sioux in the background were shrieking. They had accounted for our mules; by chance shot they had nipped our water. Yet neither event affected us as they seemed to think it should. Mules, water--these were inconsequentials in the long-run that was due to be short, at most. We husbanded other relief in our keeping. Suddenly, as I craned, the fellow fired again; he was a good shot, had discovered a niche in our rampart, for the ball fanned my cheek with the wings of a vicious wasp. On the instant I replied, snapping quick answer. "I don't think you hit him," she said. "Let me try. It may change the luck. You're tired. I'll hold on the spot--he'll come up in the same place, head and shoulders. You'll have to tempt him. Are you afraid, sir?" She smiled upon me as she took the revolver. "But if he kills me----?" I faltered. "What of that?" "You." "I?" Her face filled. "I should not be long." She adjusted the revolver to a crevice a little removed from me--"They will be hunting you, not me," she said--and crouched behind it, peering earnestly out, intent upon the hollow. And I edged farther, and farther, as if seeking for a mark, but with all my flesh a-prickle and my breath fast, like any man, I assert, who forces himself to invite the striking capabilities of a rattlesnake. Abruptly it came--the strike, so venomous that it stung my face and scalded my eyes with the spatter of sandstone and hot lead; at the moment her Colt's bellowed into my ears, thunderous because even unexpected. I could not see; I only heard an utterance that was cheer and sob in one. "I got him! Are you hurt? Are you hurt?" "No. Hurrah!" "Hurrah, dear." The air rocked with the shouts of the Sioux; shouts never before so welcome in their tidings, for they were shouts of rage and disappointment. They flooded my eyes with vigor, wiped away the daze of the bullet impact; the hollow leaped to the fore--upon its low parapet a dull shade where no shade should naturally be, and garnished with crimson.