ready rising over the chill and stark plain. It also
occurred to him that she would need water after her parched journey, and
he resolved to look for a spring, being rewarded at last by a trickling
rill near the ambush camp. But he had no utensil except the spirit
flask, which he finally emptied of its contents and replaced with the
pure water--a heroic sacrifice to a traveler who knew the comfort of a
stimulant. He retraced his steps, and was just emerging from the thicket
when his quick eye caught sight of a moving shadow before him close to
the ground, which set the hot blood coursing through his veins.

It was the figure of an Indian crawling on his hands and knees towards
the coach, scarcely forty yards away. For the first time that afternoon
Boyle's calm good-humor was overswept by a blind and furious rage. Yet
even then he was sane enough to remember that a pistol shot would alarm
the girl, and to keep that weapon as a last resource. For an instant he
crept forward as silently and stealthily as the savage, and then, with
a sudden bound, leaped upon him, driving his head and shoulders down
against the rocks before he could utter a cry, and sending the scalping
knife he was carrying between his teeth flying with the shock from his
battered jaw. Boyle seized it--his knee still in the man's back--but
the prostrate body never moved beyond a slight contraction of the lower
limbs. The shock had broken the Indian's neck. He turned the inert
man on his back--the head hung loosely on the side. But in that brief
instant Boyle had recognized the "friendly" Indian of the station to
whom he had given the card.

He rose dizzily to his feet. The whole action had passed in a few
seconds of time, and had not even been noticed by the sole occupant of
the coach. He mechanically cocked his revolver, but the man beneath him
never moved again. Neither was there any sign of flight or reinforcement
from the thicket around him. Again the whole truth flashed upon him.
This spy and traitor had been left behind by the marauders to return to
the station and avert suspicion; he had been lurking around, but being
without firearms, had not dared to attack the pair together.

It was a moment or two before Boyle regained his usual elastic
good-humor. Then he coolly returned to the spring, "washed himself of
the Indian," as he grimly expressed it to himself, brushed his clothes,
picked up the shawl and flask, and returned to the coach. It was gett