Here was a pleasant situation, he thought. They were guarding the top of the trail when they should have been guarding the bottom. There was an outlaw below him and another above him, and at the first streak of dawn he would find himself in a bad fix. Glancing up at the sky he saw that the ledge protected him from the man above; but it would take the man above only half an hour to run back along the canyon, round its upper end and appear, ready for business, on the farther side, in which case a certain member of the CL outfit would be neatly picked off at the first blush of daylight. "I was hell-bent to get down here," he soliloquized in great disgust; "an' now I'm hell-bent to get back again. What business have they got to watch _this_ end?" He looked back up the trail and could see nothing. Then he held out his hand and could not see that. "That fool didn't see me; he _heard_ me! I'm glad I didn't shoot back. He'll wait a while, doubt his ears an' think mebby that he's loco." But Ben Gates, firing on a guess, thought he saw what he fired at when the flash of his gun lit up the trail in front of him. True, the smoke interfered; but Gates was backing both his eyes and his ears. Johnny waited half an hour, and then grew anxious. His enemies were not doing anything, but appeared to be copying the patience of the noble red men, and waiting for dawn. "Cuss th' dawn!" mused Johnny fretfully. "If th' feller below still thinks he heard me, th' feller up above may get dubious an' reckon his friend pulled at nothin'; an' he's th' man I got to gamble with an' th' sooner th' better." He wriggled backward an inch at a time until he had gained a few yards and then he softly turned around. Another pebble fell on the ledge close to the place he had just evacuated. The instant he heard it he moved a little more rapidly because he was now east of the man above. A soft shuffle came to his ears and he swore under his breath when the sounds stopped at the head of the trail. The man above was now east of him, and painfully alert. Slowly arising, Johnny hugged the wall and felt it over carefully. There were knobs and slight footholds and small cracks in it, and he took the only way open to him, desperate as it was. He judged the rim to be thirty feet above him, and setting his jaws he started to climb it. The shuffling again was heard and it now passed to the west of him. "Cuss him!" gritted Johnny. "He acts like he don't know what to do with hisself. Why th' devil can't he stay where he belongs?" Stepping back on the trail again Johnny stooped over and ran silently toward its upper end, thankful that he was wearing moccasins; and he had come within ten feet of it when the shuffling sound again passed him, eastward bound. "There!" grumbled Johnny. "I _knowed_ it. He acts like a bobcat in a cage. All right, d--n you! I'll give you some music to shuffle to!"