"No, indeed they will not!" responded Gracia with spirit. "You do not understand the spirit of us Sonorans! Can't you see how the firing has slackened? The miners have driven your rebels back already, and they will do more--they will follow them up and kill them! Then, when the rebels are in flight and Del Rey and his _rurales_ are away, that will be a good time for us to slip off and make our dash for the line!" "Nothing doing!" announced Hooker, as he dismounted at the corral. "You don't know what you're talking about! But I will leave my horse here," he added. "I sure don't want _him_ to get hurt." "But you promised!" protested Gracia weakly. "Promised nothing!" retorted Bud ungraciously. "I promised to take care of you, didn't I? Well, what's the use of talking, then? You better stay right here, where you're safe. Come on, let's go to the house!" "No!" cried Gracia, her dark eyes turning misty with imminent tears. "Oh, Mr. Hooker!" she burst out, "didn't I keep them all waiting while I put on this riding-skirt? I thought you had come to take me away! What do I care to be safe? I want to be free! I want to run away--and go across the line to dear Phil!" she faltered. Then she looked up at him sharply and her voice took on an accusing tone. "Aha!" she said, as if making some expected discovery, "so _that_ is it! I thought perhaps you were _afraid_!" "What?" demanded Bud, put suddenly upon the defensive. "I might have known it," soliloquized Gracia with conviction. "You are jealous of dear Phil!" "Who? Me?" cried Hooker, smiling down at her grimly. "Well, let it go at that," he said, as she regarded him with an arch smile. "I'd certainly be a fool to take all those chances for nothing. Let him steal his own girl--that's what I say!" "Now that, Mr. Hooker," burst out Gracia in a passion, "is very unkind--and rude! Am I a woman of the town, to be stolen by one man or another? Am I--" "That's what you would be," put in Bud, with brutal directness, "if these rebels got hold of you. No, ma'am, I wouldn't take you out of this town for a hundred thousand dollars. You don't know what you're talking about, that's all! Wait till the fighting is over--Gee! Did you hear that? Come on, let's get into the house!" He ducked suddenly as a bullet went _spang_ against the corrugated iron roof above them and, seizing her by the hand, he half dragged her through a side door and into the summer garden. Here a sudden outcry of women's voices assailed their ears like a rush of wind and they beheld peon mothers running to and fro with their screaming children clasped to their breasts or dragging at their skirts. A few helpless men were trying to keep them quiet, but as the bullets began to thud against the adobe walls the garden became a bedlam.