Three closely spaced shots sent Scotty to the ground as slugs whined off the mesa rim directly above him. Then there was silence. Rick heard, as though from far off, the clatter of rock. He waited. Scotty was waiting, too. [Illustration: _A bullet whined off the top of the rock pile, and then there was silence_] Minutes ticked by. Then, faintly, Rick heard a sound that could only have been a horse whinnying. Scotty stood upright and climbed to the very top of the mesa. Rick started to yell, then choked it back. Scotty must know what he was doing. He saw his pal walk leisurely out of sight. Rick stood up, watching. In a moment Scotty reappeared, climbing down the incline he had used to get to the top. In a moment the boys were face to face. "He's gone," Scotty announced. "Had a horse staked out below the opposite side of the mesa. I saw him ride off. He was too far away for me to get a good look at him." "Mighty strange," Rick said with a sigh of relief. Scotty nodded. "Strange is right. You know what? He saw me standing there on the rim. He turned and looked at me, and he waved." "Waved?" Rick asked. "Yep. It was a real jaunty wave." Rick shook his head in bewilderment. "My, that was friendly." "I thought so," Scotty agreed. "Come on, boy. We've got to make tracks out of here. Time is running out." Rick collected his shirt and jumped into the jeep. Scotty backed around and headed toward the base as fast as the road allowed. Not until they were down on relatively level ground did they try to converse. "The rifleman must have read about David and Goliath," Rick said. "Why else would he run off?" Scotty chuckled. "He was helpless. He was in deadly peril, as the storybooks say. Seriously, I think he _was_ helpless." Rick stared at his pal. Scotty could mean only one thing. "Then he had no intention of hitting us?" "I doubt it. He was shooting at short range, and even a poor shot couldn't very well have missed as often as he did. Besides, I don't think you'd find many poor shots with rifles in this country." "Then he must have been trying to scare us off," Rick said thoughtfully. "When you started heaving rocks at him, he knew we weren't scaring very much." "Not much," Scotty said ruefully. "I don't know about you, but my innards turned to custard." Rick grinned. He knew exactly what Scotty meant. "If things had happened a little more slowly, I'd have dropped dead from sheer fright. But I didn't have time. Anyway, when you started with your sling, he had a choice of shooting for keeps or getting out of there. So he got. Is that how you figure it?" "Exactly right. What other explanation is there? Stones against rifle slugs isn't much of a contest. I only tried it because there wasn't anything else to do." "We could have stayed under cover until Mac and Pancho arrived," Rick pointed out. "Negative. All he had to do was shift position and he'd have had a clear shot at us."