The gleam of a star glittered along the steel of his revolver, and she realized that he meant what he threatened.

“If I select your bullet rather than the rocks, what then?”

“You will get it, but in that case you will die like a fool.”

“You have believed me to be one, all this afternoon.”

“Possibly,” he admitted; “your words and actions certainly justified some such conclusion, but the opportunity has arrived for causing me to revise that suspicion.”

“I don’t care to have you, revise it, Mr. Bob Hampton.  If I go, I shall hate you just the same.”

Hampton’s teeth clicked like those of an angry dog.  “Hate and be damned,” he exclaimed roughly.  “All I care about now is to drag you out of here alive.”

His unaffected sincerity impressed her more than any amount of pleading.  She was long accustomed to straight talk; it always meant business, and her untutored nature instantly responded with a throb of confidence.

“Well, if you put it that way,” she said, “I ’ll go.”

For one breathless moment neither stirred.  Then a single wild yell rang sharply forth from the rocks in their front, and a rifle barked savagely, its red flame cleaving the darkness with tongue of fire.  An instant and the impenetrable gloom again surrounded them.

“Come on, then,” he whispered, his fingers grasping her sleeve.

She shook off the restraining touch of his hand as if it were contamination, and sank down upon her knees beside the inert body.  He could barely perceive the dim outlines of her bowed figure, yet never moved, his breath perceptibly quickening, while he watched and waited.  Without word or moan she bent yet lower, and pressed her lips upon the cold, white face.  The man caught no more than the faintest echo of a murmured “Good-bye, old dad; I wish I could take you with me.”  Then she stood stiffly upright, facing him.  “I’m ready now,” she announced calmly.  “You can go on ahead.”

They crept among low shrubs and around the bowlders, carefully guarding every slightest movement lest some rustle of disturbed foliage, or sound of loosened stone, might draw the fire of those keen watchers.  Nor dared they ignore the close proximity of their own little company, who, amid such darkness, might naturally suspect them for approaching savages.  Every inch of their progress was attained through tedious groping, yet the distance to be traversed was short, and Hampton soon found himself pressing against the uprising precipice.  Passing his fingers along the front, he finally found that narrow ledge which he had previously located with such patient care, and reaching back, drew the girl silently upon her feet beside him.  Against that background of dark cliff they might venture to stand erect, the faint glimmer of reflected light barely sufficient to reveal to each the shadowy outline of the other.

“Don’t move an inch from this spot,” he whispered.  “It wouldn’t be a square deal, Kid, to leave those poor fellows to their death without even telling them there’s a chance to get out.”