Lee rose and walked across to the bushes where he lay crouched.  Very deliberately she stood there, shading her eyes from the sun as she looked toward the sharpshooters.  Twice they had taken a chance, because of the distance between her and Prince.  She intended they should know how close she was to him now.

Billie could not conceal his anxiety for her.  “Why don’t you get back where you were?  I got as far as I could from you on purpose.  What’s the sense of you comin’ right up to me when you see they’re shootin’ at me?”

“That’s why I came up closer.  They’ll have to stop it as long as I’m here.”

“You can’t stay there the rest of yore natural life, can you?” he asked with manifest annoyance.  Even if he got out of his present danger alive—­and Billie had to admit to himself that the chances did not look good—­he knew it would be cast up to him some day that he had used Lee Snaith’s presence as a shield against his enemies.  “Why don’t you act reasonable an’ ride back to town, like a girl ought to do?  You’ve been a good friend to us.  There’s nothin’ more you can do.  It’s up to us to fight our way out.”

He took careful aim and fired.  A man in the bushes two hundred yards back of them scuttled to his feet and ran limping off.  Billie covered the dodging man with his rifle carefully, then lowered his gun without firing.

“Let him go,” said Prince aloud.  “Mr. Dumont won’t bother us a whole lot.  He’s gun-shy anyhow.”

From across the river came a scatter of bullets.

“They’ve got to hit closeter to that before they worry me,” Jim called to the two above.

“I don’t think they shot to hit.  They’re tryin’ to scare Miss Lee away,” called down Billie.

“As if I didn’t know dad wouldn’t let ’em take any chances with me here,” the girl said confidently “If we can hold out till night I can stay here and keep shooting while you two slip away and hide.  Before morning your friends ought to arrive.”

“If they got yore message.”

“Oh, they got it.  Jack Goodheart carried it.”

The riflemen across the river were silent for a time.  When they began sniping again, it was from such an angle that they could aim at the cave without endangering those above.  Both Clanton and Prince returned the fire.

Presently Lee touched on the shoulder the man beside her.

“Look!”

She pointed to a cloud of smoke behind them.  From it tongues of fire leaped up into the air.  Farther to the right a second puff of smoke could be seen, and beyond it another and still a fourth jet.

After a moment of dead silence Prince spoke.  “They’ve fired the prairie.  The wind is blowin’ toward us.  They mean to smoke us out.”

“Yes.”

“We’ll be driven down into the open bed of the river where they can pick us off.”

The girl nodded.

“Now, will you leave us?” Billie turned on her triumphantly.  He could at least choose the conditions of the last stand they must make.  “They’ve called our bluff.  It’s a showdown.”