The first, a fat old squaw with gray bangs hanging straight down to her eyebrows, scuttled for cover, the lead burro crowding past her and neatly overturning her in the trail. But a slim girl in khaki breeches and high-laced boots stood her ground, eyeing him with a slight frown from under a light gray Stetson hat. “Get back, I say! A man on the ridge is watching this trail with a rifle across a rock. It may be Queo--get back!” He did not stop with words. He took the girl by the arm and bustled her forcibly around the sharp kink in the trail that would, he hoped, effectually hide them from the ridge. “Are you quite insane?” The girl twitched her arm out of his grasp. “Or is this a joke you are perpetrating on the natives? I must say I fail to see the humor of it.” “Climb that gully to the top and sneak along the ridge a couple of hundred yards, and you will see the point of the joke,” Rawley retorted with an access of dignity, perhaps to cover the extreme informality of his arrival. “And why should any one--even Queo--want to shoot us?” True to her sex, the girl was refusing to abdicate her first position in the matter. “How should I know? He may not be watching for you, particularly. From the ridge he probably saw your pack train around the turn above here, and he may have thought you were prospectors. I don’t know; I’m only guessing. What I do know is what I saw: a man with a rifle laid across a rock, up there, watching this trail. It may not be you he’s after; but I wouldn’t deliberately walk into range just to find out.” “What would you do, then? Stay here forever?” “Until my partner and I eliminate the risk, you’d better stay here.” Rawley’s tone was masterful. “I only came down to warn whoever was coming--walking into an ambush.” The girl eyed him speculatively, with an exasperating little smile. “It all sounds very thrilling; very tenderfooty indeed. And in the meantime, there’s poor old Deacon down there on his back in the ditch. Do you always--er--arrive like that?” Rawley turned his back on her indignantly and discovered the old squaw sitting solidly where the lead burro had placed her. She was very fat, and she filled that portion of the trail which she occupied. The red bandana was pushed back on her head, and her gray curtain of bangs was parted rakishly on one side. She was staring at Rawley fixedly, a look of terror in her eyes. He went to her, meaning to help her up. Now that he recalled that first panicky moment, he remembered that the burro had deposited her with some force in her present position. She might be hurt. But the old squaw put up her hands before her, palms out to ward him off. She cried out, a shrill expostulation in her own tongue which caused the girl to swing round quickly and hurry toward her.