It was while he was steadying the rifle over the rock in front of him that he felt something giving way and realized that the slight push of his wedged-in body was tipping the bulwark boulder over to set it in motion down the slope. In a frenzy of excitement at this discovery his only thought was that with the boulder gone he would lose his sheltering breastwork and be naked to rifle fire from below. Dropping the gun, he clung to the tilting rock with both hands and tried to hold it--to drag it back upon its balancing pinnacle. When his puny effort failed, and the great rock turned slowly over to go bounding down the declivity straight for the sapling grove and carrying a small avalanche of lesser stones with it, he lost his head completely, snatching up the rifle and firing it wildly again and again, and with no attempt at taking aim, until he had pumped the last cartridge from its magazine. It was this final shot that did for him. In his mad haste he failed to hold the gunstock firmly against his shoulder, and at the trigger-pulling the kick of the weapon slewed him around with a jerk that snapped his head against the rock behind him. For a brief instant the black bowl of the heavens was illuminated by a burst of fiery stars, and after that he knew nothing more until he opened his aching eyes upon a graying dawn to find Garth kneeling beside him, unbuttoning his shirt to search for the presumptive effacing wound. At the touch of the big man’s cold hands he sat up, with the buzzing of many bees in his brain. “It isn’t there,” he said; “it’s the back of my head. The gun kicked me against the rock. How long have I been gone?” “A hour ’r so. I allowed yuh was scoutin’ round to see what’d come o’ the jumpers; was why I didn’t come a-huntin’ for yuh. Besides, that there game li’l’ pardner o’ yourn was needin’ to have his laig fixed up.” “What _has_ become of the jumpers?” Philip asked, holding his head in his hands in a vain endeavor to quiet the bees. Garth sat back on his heels and his wide-mouthed smile made him look like a grinning ogre. “Skedaddled; gone where the woodbine twineth an’ the whangdoodle mourneth for her fust-borned, I reckon. Cattle o’ that sort ain’t makin’ no stand-up fight, less’n they got the odds _all_ their way. And what with this here mount’in tumblin’ down on ’em, and guns a-poppin’ three ways from the ace, they wasn’t stayin’ to wait for daylight--not any.” Then: “That was a mighty fly li’l’ trick o’ yourn--shovin’ a rock slide down at ’em.” Philip was honest enough not to take credit for a sheer accident. “I didn’t,” he denied. “I had jammed myself in between two rocks to get cover, and I was scared stiff when I found the front one rolling away from me; I was even silly enough to grab it and try to hold it back.”