out of his hand. As it fell clattering
down the side of the ledge, he groaned: "Damned good shooting! They've
probably left their best marksman below with the ponies. No hope for
escape on that side. Well, there's some consolation in the thought that
they'll undoubtedly finish me before I get too damned thirsty. Glad it
wasn't my hand."

Although the period he spent waiting for the attack was less than an
hour by his watch, it seemed to last so long that he had hopes that the
Rurales would appear in time to rescue him. His spirits rose with the
prospect. Looking about him at the walls, the fireplace, and the red
cross, he reflected: "I am not the first man, or even the first white
man, that has withstood an attack in this place." In imagination he
constructed the history of the fort. Here, in ages remote, a tribe of
Indians, defeated and driven to the mountains had constructed an
outpost against their enemies of the plain, but these had captured the
stronghold, and fortified it against its former occupants. Later, a
band of Spanish gold-seekers had made a stand here against natives whom
they had roused against them by oppression. Or, perhaps, as indicated
by the cross, it had afforded refuge to the Mission Fathers, those
heroic souls who had faced the horrors of the infernolike desert in
their saintly efforts to convert its fiendish inhabitants.

With the symbol of Christianity in his mind, Lane turned toward the
giant cactus, which he had heretofore regarded chiefly in the aspect of
a flagpole, and saw in its columnar trunk and opposing branches a
distinct resemblance to a cross. The plant was dead, and dry as punk.
Suddenly there flashed into his mind a hideous suggestion. More cruel
than even the Romans, the inventors of crucifixion, the Apaches are
wont to bind their captives to these dead cacti, which supply at once
scourging thorns, binding stake, and consuming fuel, and, kindling a
fire at the top, leave it to burn slowly down to the victim, and, long
before it despatches him, to twist his body and limbs into what appear
to the Apache sense of humor to be exquisitely ludicrous contortions.

With his mind occupied by these horrible apprehensions, Lane looked at
the rattlesnake upon the sahuaro whose struggles by this time had
diminished to a movement of the tail.

"Poor old rattler," he thought. "I wish I could spare a cartridge to
put you out of your misery."

At length, as Lane peered up the mo