if Lynch and his Indians were watching from the gap they
would notice his turning off to the left, and in that case a good runner
might cut across to Bone Canyon before he could get through the pass.
But the mountain side was empty and as the dusk was gathering he passed
through the portals of Bone Canyon.

Like all desert canyons it boxed in at its mouth, opening out later in a
broad valley behind; his road was the sand-wash, the path of the last
cloudburst, now packed hard and set like stone. In the middle of the
sand-wash a little channel had been dug by the last of the sluicing
water; above the wash there rose another cut-bank where the cloudburst
before it had taken out an even greater slice; and then on both sides
there rose high bluffs of conglomerate which some father of all the
cloudbursts had formed. Wunpost was riding in the lead now on his
fast-walking mule, the two pack-animals following wearily along behind;
in his nest on the front pack Good Luck was more than half sleeping,
Wunpost himself was tempted to nod--and then, from the west bluff, there
was a spit of fire and Wunpost found himself on the ground.

Across his breast and under his arm there was a streak that burned like
fire, his mules were milling and bashing their packs; and as they turned
both ways and ran he rolled over into the channel, with his rifle still
clutched in one hand. Those days of steady practise had not been in
vain, for as he went off his mule he had snatched at his saddle-gun and
dragged it from its scabbard. And now he lay and waited, listening to
the running of his mules and the frenzied barking of his dog; and it
came to him vaguely that several shots had been fired, and some from the
east bank of the wash. But the man who had hit him had fired from the
west and Wunpost crept down the wash and looked up.

A trickle of blood was running down his left arm from the bullet wound
which had just missed his heart, but his whole body was tingling with a
strength which could move mountains and he was consumed with a passion
for revenge. For the second time he had been ambushed and shot by this
gang of cold-blooded murderers, and he had no doubt that their motive
was the same as that to which the Indian had confessed. They had dogged
his steps to kill him for his money--Pisen-face Lynch, or whoever it
was--but their shooting was poor and as he rose beside a bush Wunpost
took a chance from the east. The man he was looking for had shot