That arrow that had pierced Blaze had come from a rocky lair to the north of their position, just how far away he could not tell. The hiss of it had really been Sid’s first warning. Never again could he forget that sharp, ghostly _whew_! Making for a sheltering hollow which would be out of sight of the rocky lair, yet be open enough for him to see around him a short distance, Sid began to crawl down from the ridge. As yet he had hardly moved, but his heart was beating wildly. It seemed to him absolutely hopeless to get away from this mountain with he knew not how many hostile Indians all around him. The very idea that this desolate land was inhabited by even a small tribe seemed weird, uncanny. Not a track save their own had they seen so far. Even the old wagon ruts of the Hornaday expedition had long since been buried in the sands or washed out by the rains. It had been all new country, all virgin. If an Indian band lived here they could not be Papagoes, for the first one missing from the reservation would call out a troop of soldiers after him. Had Vasquez, then, already gotten up from Mexico with some Yaquis? Sid thought of all possible solutions as he crept warily downhill, pausing before each craggy outcropping in his path before daring to pass it. Then a glimpse of something red which moved behind a bush below to the left caused him to stop and raise his rifle, and, while poised in the tense set of the aim, a sudden, almost noiseless, rush of feet behind him sent electric shocks all through him! There was no time to even lower the rifle and turn around. Subconsciously his leg muscles leapt out wildly. He had an expectant sensation of a knife entering his back--and then a thin band like a strap swept down and across his eyes and something tight gripped around his throat. Knees, and the heavy weight of a man on his back, bore him to earth. His arms sprawled out, dropping the rifle; his tongue shot out and out, gagging fiercely against that awful halter grip around his throat. Sid thought of the Thug strangling cloth in that last instant before an enormous drumming in his head gave way to blackness clouding over his eyes. Then came the heavy thump of the ground striking him, and unconsciousness.... It seemed but a very few minutes, the continuation of some terrible dream, when his eyes opened again. He was lying face downward where he had fallen, and his lungs were pumping and sucking air in great draughts, as if recovering from some endless and vague period of suffocation. Blood was trickling down his face and making a little pool on the rock, while a cut or a bruise, he could not say which, over his eyebrows smarted sharply.