Elbert’s leg lifted out of the stirrup--one of the hardest things he was ever called to do, but that very second the lights of the sedan went out. There was one clear call from Mary Gertling, deadened by a blasting roar from the sedan’s exhaust at the very knees of his mount. Too much for Mamie. She went straight up and tried to keep going, Elbert at the very top, arms around her frantic throat at the narrowest--as the darkened sedan gouged forward like a speed-boat. Cal’s voice reached him: ‘... that Burton girl--she’s shootin’ the lines! Come on, Slim, it means us, too! Come on, Kid!’ Shots in the air--shots from ahead and at the sides. He felt Mamie tottering still on her hind feet; then a jerk as if some one had given her a cut with a whip, and over she went backward. He pushed her neck from him and fell back, and knew no more, until Cal’s low tones, as he was being lifted. ‘It’s all right. Kid. Chester’s good for both of us.’ For a time, in spite of that, he thought he still had Mamie round the neck, but it was Cal’s ample chest--Slim’s Indian in an easy gallop alongside. ‘Where’s the sedan?’ he finally mumbled. ‘Lord, Kid, she’s surprised papa by this time!’ XII FLASHLIGHT AND FAWNSKIN ELBERT kept shaking his head; no bones broken there or elsewhere, but seemingly no end to the phases of his coming-to. It dawned on him there had been a blank from the time Mamie went over backwards, until he found himself here on Chester with Cal. He regretted missing some part in there--going through the Mexican lines. ‘Where’s Mamie?’ he demanded, jerking erect. ‘Came through all right. Slim’s got her safe.’ Now Elbert gradually made out that they were in ‘Mexicali’ Burton’s oil town. They had been halted--first a voice in Mexican, then American, Cal answering quietly. He saw the sedan, and heard from aside in the dark, Mamie’s long-drawn wheeze, the same protest as when she had refused advance to the hitching-rail before the Señora’s house in Nacimiento. There was one cabin door from which light streamed, and in the aperture a blocky, bareheaded man appeared, legs planted wide apart, the air suddenly burned by withering profanities. ‘... bringin’ three young women through Vallejo’s lines!... Sap-heads, you fellows. It’s running out of your ears!’ ‘I’m not takin’ no free talk from no oil man,’ growled Slim. Cal mildly broke in. ‘Now as to that, Mister--’ ‘Can’t you see we’ve got a war on?’ the blocky one in the doorway yelled. ‘Can’t you see they’re twenty to one, tryin’ to get our oil wells?’ His face had turned sidewise; light fell upon the uncovered, close-cropped head--massive jaw, thin lips and startlingly familiar blue eyes. Around that roaring neck from behind, a pair of white arms were flung at this instant, ‘Mexicali’s’ fury shut off: ‘But Papa! I keep telling you it was all my fault!’