Again Billie was nodding as he sat there. Had he been left undisturbed the chances were that before five minutes he would have rolled over in his blanket, and settled down to sleep; and after that the hours would slip along, for Billie was a famous sleeper. But this was not to be, for a certain sound came stealing along over the desert and struck upon the ears of the boy, causing him to instantly sit up, wide-awake: “Wolves, as sure as anything!” he told his pony, already whinnying the alarm. CHAPTER XII. THE LONG NIGHT. “That’s right, it never rains but it pours,” Billie went on to say, as he fondled his Marlin repeating rifle, which had of late proven its value in many ways; one of which accounted for the skin of a grizzly bear which the overseer at the Red Spar Mine had promised to cure for the boy, and send to the ranch later on. He listened and soon made up his mind that the howls were approaching. “Course they just seem to know there’s a chance for a fine meal, out here on the wild old desert; and there they come, licketty-split, as fast as they can run. But they needn’t think they’ve got an easy mark to deal with. Reckon that if I could knock over an old he-grizzly, I ought to be able to take care of a pack of cowardly wolves and coyotes. Huh! let ’em come, I say. But I wish that old moon’d peep out from behind them clouds; it’d sure be a heap more sociable like.” Brave words these were, and Billie doubtless meant to prove that he did not fear the coming of the four-footed pirates of the plains and the desert. All the same, his hands trembled more or less as he handled his gun, nervously drawing back the hammer several times, as if to make certain that it worked mechanically. There could be no doubt but that the wolves were heading straight toward him. Billie was amazed. Why, had it been daylight, so that they could see him with their sharp eyes, they could not be taking a more direct course toward the spot where he and Jupiter were encamped. Once he thought that perhaps he ought to jump on the back of his pony, and let the broncho shoot off over the desert as he pleased; feeling certain that Jupiter would do everything that lay in his power to keep out of the reach of the wolves. Hardly had this idea occurred to him than he turned it down. “That would be fool’s play,” he declared, aloud, so that Jupiter might hear him, and perhaps understand what motives influenced his actions. “They’d keep right on after us, and sooner or later we’d just have to haul up and fight it out. So what’s the use changing base? If it’s got to come, this is as good a place as any. And if I’ve been and got anywhere near the border of the desert, what a goose I’d be to head back into it again, when that sand storm may commence in the morning. No sir-ee, here I take my stand, come what will; and that’s all there is to it!”