He went only a short distance. Emerging from an opening in one of the adobe houses he saw a parapet wall, sadly crumpled in spots, facing the plains, and he dropped to his hands and knees and crept toward it, secreting himself behind it and prodding the wall cautiously with the barrel of his rifle until he found a joint in the stone work where the adobe mud was rotted. He poked the muzzle of the rifle through the crevice, took careful aim, and had the satisfaction of hearing a savage curse in the instant following the flash. He threw himself flat immediately, listening to the spatter and whine of the bullets of the volley that greeted his shot. They kept it up long--but when there was a momentary cessation he crept back to the entrance of the adobe house, entered, followed another passage and came out on the ledge farther along the side of the pueblo. He halted in a dense shadow and looked toward the spot where the men had been. They had vanished. There was nothing to do but to wait, and he sank behind a huge block of stone in an angle of the ledge, noting with satisfaction that he could see the slope that he had set Levins to guard. "I'm the boss of this fort if I don't go to sleep," he told himself grimly as he stretched out. He lay there, watching, while the moonlight faded, while a gray streak in the east slowly widened, presaging the dawn. Stretched flat, his aching muscles welcoming the support of the cool stone of the ledge, he had to fight off the drowsiness that assailed him. An hour dragged by. He knew the deputies were watching, no doubt having separated to conceal themselves behind convenient boulders that dotted the plains at the foot of the slope. Or perhaps while he had been in the passages of the pueblo, changing his position, some of them might have stolen to the numerous crags and outcroppings of rock at the base of the pueblo. They might now be massing for a rush up the slope. But he doubted they would risk the latter move, for they knew that he must be on the alert, and they had cause to fear his rifle. Once he rested his head on his extended right arm, and the contact was so agreeable that he allowed it to remain there--long. He caught himself in time; in another second he would have been too late. He saw the figure of a man on the slope a foot or two below the crest. He was flat on his stomach, no doubt having crept there during the minutes that Trevison had been enjoying his rest, and at the instant Trevison saw him he was raising his rifle, directing it at the recess where Levins had been left, on guard.