e without exposing more
than the top of his head. He lifted up a heavy stone or two; and stood
them along the edge for further protection. Then he waited--waited for
hours it seemed to him; looking and looking down the ravine until his
eyes were fit to start out of his head; and he could see nothing; but
lo! when he looked again the light was there!

On the whole he was satisfied. His rock commanded the entire ravine
below; it was as steep as a pair of stairs. There was not a stick of
herbage below; only a trough of heaped and broken rock masses. On either
hand they were shut in by straight lead-coloured walls of rock; and at
the bottom of the ravine, the forbidding, mist-gray wall of the main
gorge cut off the view. In front and on the left they were amply
protected; their right flank was the weak spot. Above them on this side,
part of the wall of the ravine had given way some ages past; and a bit
of the plain had sunk down. The hollow thus formed contained a grove of
gaunt trees and underbrush. If their assailants, under cover of the
rocks on the way, ever climbed to it, Garth and Natalie would be badly
off indeed.

It was a grim figure that the first rays of light revealed sitting on
the big rock. Garth had lost his hat long ago; and he was both unshaven
and unshorn. He crouched, hugging his knees, with his rifle across his
thighs; and his sheepskin coat hung over his shoulders ready to fling
off, when he needed to act. The flannel shirt beneath was in rags; and
his moccasins, mere apologies for foot-coverings. But to Natalie,
regarding the cool, bright shine of his eyes, as he smiled down on her,
he was wholly beautiful. She was scarcely better off; her pale face was
enframed in a sad wreck of a limp, stained felt hat; but she could smile
too; and Garth had never found her lovelier in her bravery.

The suspense was well-nigh intolerable--and so they fell to chaffing.

"If mother could only see us now!" said Garth with a grin.

"I feel like a white cat coming out of a coal-bin," said Natalie.
"'What's the use!' she says, looking round at herself. 'The job is too
big to tackle. If I was only a black cat it wouldn't show!'"

"You could walk right on as Liz, the girl bandit of the Rockies," said
Garth.

"Don't you talk!" she retorted. "You look as if Liz had missed her cue,
and you'd been through the sawmill!"

And then Garth saw a black sleeve sticking out from behind a rock in
the ravine below; and he got dow