cheated out of our revenge!"

CHAPTER XXIII. RAFE AND JEFF MISCALCULATE

The two men whom the craven gambler had sighted were coming slowly
onward, their movements suggesting a good deal of care and watchfulness.

Nor did they come in a wholly straight line. That they did not suspect
the nearness of Jim Duff and his mad companion was plain at a glance.

"Burrow in the sand!" whispered the gambler in Ashby's ear. "Quiet! Be
ready, but don't do anything unless I give you the word."

"When you do give me the word," trembled the hotel man, "I'll kill 'em
both."

"Not unless we have to do so--remember!" ordered the gambler. "We want,
if possible, to take 'em alive."

Let us now go back to the two men whom Duff and Ashby were watching so
closely.

They were Rafe Bodson and Jeff Moore.

Both had come out of the recent fighting unharmed. Neither Rafe nor Jeff
had fired a shot at the invading forces led by Hawkins. Instead, the
pair had slipped stealthily away, until they had gotten out of the
immediate zone of the hot firing. Then they hid under some bushes.

"An hour ago I'd have felt like a sneak, not standing by the gang any
better," whispered Jeff uneasily.

"Same here," Rafe admitted. "In fact, I'm wondering whether I acted
straight in running off like this."

"Aren't you sure about it in your own mind?" asked Jeff slowly.

"Almost," Rafe returned. "All that bothers me is not sticking by the
same crowd that we started out with to-night. As for Jim Duff--"

"He's poison, and deadly poison at that," broke in Jeff.

"That's just what he is, pardner."

"Yet I used to like Duff pretty well."

"So did I," nodded Jeff. "But that was when I thought he had some sand."

"The fellow's a skulking coyote!"

"A coyote is brave, compared with Jim Duff," contended Jeff Moore.

"Reade and Hazelton showed the real sand!"

"I never thought tenderfeet could be as brave," glowed Moore.

"Jeff, I reckon Reade and Hazelton aren't real tenderfeet any more.
They've been west some time. But, then, such fellows wouldn't be
tenderfeet even if they lived in New Jersey all the time. Courage
belongs in some fellows, no matter where they work."

"The fighting seems to be over," observed Jeff Moore.

"Then the friends of the two engineers must have found them," suggested
Bodson.

"It doesn't sound like it over there. The newcomers seem to be doing a
lot of hunting in the gully."

"Let's move in closer," proposed Raf