"Don't know. Can't tell till afterwards. You see, they take some feller that's alone like me, and then they rush his camp when he ain't quite ready for 'em, and ginerally plug 'im with a sawed-off shot-gun load before he has a chance to git at 'em. They lay around and wait for their chance, and it comes soon enough. Of course a feller alone like me has got to let up watching some time. Maybe they ketch 'im asleep. Maybe the feller gits tired waiting, and goes out in broad day, and kills two or three just to make the whole crowd pile on him and settle the thing. I heard of a case like that once. It's awful hard on a man's mind--to git a gang after him." "And so they're going to rush your camp to-night?" cried the stranger. "How do you know? Who told you?" "Feller come and told me." "And what are you going to do? Fight?" "Don't see nothin' else to do," answered Bill gloomily, still staring at the cactus plant. There was a silence. Finally the stranger burst out in an amazed cry. "Well, I never heard of such a thing in my life! How many of them are there?" "Eight," answered Bill. "And now look-a-here; you ain't got no manner of business foolin' around here just now, and you might better lope off before dark. I don't ask no help in this here row. I know your happening along here just now don't give me no call on you, and you better hit the trail." "Well, why in the name of wonder don't you go get the sheriff?" cried the stranger. "Oh, h----!" said Bill. IV Long, smoldering clouds spread in the western sky, and to the east silver mists lay on the purple gloom of the wilderness. Finally, when the great moon climbed the heavens and cast its ghastly radiance upon the bushes, it made a new and more brilliant crimson of the campfire, where the flames capered merrily through its mesquit branches, filling the silence with the fire chorus, an ancient melody which surely bears a message of the inconsequence of individual tragedy--a message that is in the boom of the sea, the sliver of the wind through the grass-blades, the silken clash of hemlock boughs. No figures moved in the rosy space of the camp, and the search of the moonbeams failed to disclose a living thing in the bushes. There was no owl-faced clock to chant the weariness of the long silence that brooded upon the plain.