e would be
invisible to any one below. He chose the highest one and crept to its
crest.

The gray twilight was spreading over the land when he raised his head
above one of the boulders. In that instant he dropped to earth as if
he had been shot. An Indian was riding up to the bottom of the knoll.

The Apache's rifle lay across his lean bare thighs; his gaunt body
bent forward as he scanned the rocks above him. He had been heading
for the hill from this side while Schiefflin was climbing up the
opposite slope. Evidently he was coming to the summit to look over the
country for enemies. There must be others of the band close by.

Schiefflin found a narrow crack between two boulders and peeped out.

Another savage appeared at that moment on the summit of the next
knoll. He was afoot; and now he stood there motionless searching the
wide landscape for any moving form. He was so near that in the waning
light the smear of war-paint across his ugly face was visible.

Schiefflin crooked his thumb over the hammer of his rifle and raised
it slowly to the full cock, pressing the trigger with his finger to
prevent the click.

The first Apache had dismounted and was climbing the hill. As he drew
closer the clink of ponies' hoofs sounded down in the dry wash. A
number of dirty turbans came into sight above the bank. More followed
and still more, until thirty-odd were bobbing up and down to the
movement of the horses.

A moment passed, one of those mighty moments when a man's life appears
before him as a period which he has finished, when a man's thoughts
rove swiftly over what portions of that period they choose. And
Schiefflin's mind went to that talk with the man at the Bruncknow
house.

"Yo'-all keep on and yo'll sure find yo'r tombstone out there some
day."

He could hear the old-timer saying the words now. And, as he listened
to the grim warning again, he felt--as perhaps those two prospectors
felt in the moment of their awakening down by the river--that fate
had sadly swindled him. He was stiffening his trigger-finger for the
pull, peering across the sights at the Indian who had climbed to
within a few yards of the weapon's muzzle, when--the warrior on the
summit of the next knoll waved his hand. The Apache halted at the
gesture and Schiefflin followed his gaze in time to see the lean brown
arm of the sentinel sweep forward. Both of the savages turned and
descended the knolls.

They caught up their ponies and rode o