Dismissed, beside herself with worry and hopelessness, Molly crawled back to safety. In her heart there was no malice toward Johnny. He was in danger at her request. It made him the master. He was fighting for her! Her deductions were as primitive as a cave-woman’s. Likewise, they were uncommonly sound. Kent had his forces in position now, and from behind bowlders a half dozen men dashed for the flat. Charlie Paul did not wait for Johnny’s permission to fire. Johnny’s gun began flashing, too. Two men with arms limp at their sides scurried back. Three others, uninjured, followed them. One man—Stub Rawlings—lay face upward in the open, pawing the ground with his legs, one of which had a hole shot through it. “Better take care of him, Hobe,” Johnny cried. “Git him out of the way. Just you alone does the job.” Stalwart, unafraid, big Hobe walked into view. “Good God, Johnny!” he shouted. “Are you crazy? I’d sure hate to shoot you down; but I’m goin’ to if you don’t give in. What’re you goin’ to do with that girl?” “Marry her, if she’ll have me.” The foreman swore a terrible oath. “You can’t steal a girl like that.” “Hell I can’t!” Johnny roared. “She’s here, ain’t she?” “Will you give up if we let you go?” Ferris demanded. “Ain’t no givin’ up this time, Hobe. Don’t you be so sad about me.” “You damn fool! You pore damn fool!” he repeated over and over again as he went downhill, Stub in his arms. There came another lull. And then reënforcements arrived for Kent—Gallup, and no less a person than Jasper Roddy, the sheriff of Shoshone County; and a man Johnny did not know, the Rev. Murray Whitaker. There was a prodigious amount of consultation soon after Gallup arrived. The boy could see them surrounding Aaron’s rig. The upshot of it was the ascent of the sheriff to the little flat. “You hear me, there?” Roddy demanded. “I hear you all right,” Johnny replied. “But I don’t like your voice.” “You’re under arrest,” the sheriff bawled. “Shootin’ with intent to kill, and five or six other things. I want that horse-stealin’ Injun what’s with you, too.” “I’d admire to see you git him,” Johnny laughed. “I always had a hankerin’ to see just how yellow you was.” “Well, you hear me. I’ve sworn in each one of these men as my deputies. We’re goin’ to get you! You’re defyin’ the law now.” “Don’t you scare me thata-way,” Johnny answered sarcastically. “You’d better stay in the rear of your deputies, Roddy, or this mountain will be your monument, and it’d be a shame to waste one as big as this on you.” Roddy withdrew and appeared in no hurry to close in on his prisoners. This Dice boy was thoroughly disconcerting. Kent and Gallup tried to insist on storming the mine at once, but wily Jasper Roddy could see no sense in wasting life when it would be easier—and safer—to starve the fugitives into submission.