Page:Clarence Mulford - Man from Bar-20.djvu/201

 Blindman's Buff have been guarding the bottom. There was an outlaw below him and another above him, and at the first streak of dawn he would find himself in a bad fix. Glancing up at the sky he saw that the ledge protected him from the man above; but it would take the man above only half an hour to run back along the canyon, round its upper end and appear, ready for business, on the farther side, in which case a certain member of the CL outfit would be neatly picked off at the first blush of daylight.

"I was hell-bent to get down here," he soliloquized in great disgust; "an' now I'm hell-bent to get back again. What business have they got to watch this end?"

He looked back up the trail and could see nothing. Then he held out his hand and could not see that. "That fool didn't see me; he heard me! I'm glad I didn't shoot back. He'll wait a while, doubt his ears an' think mebby that he's loco."

But Ben Gates, firing on a guess, thought he saw what he fired at when the flash of his gun lit up the trail in front of him. True, the smoke interfered; but Gates was backing both his eyes and his ears.

Johnny waited half an hour, and then grew anxious. His enemies were not doing anything, but appeared to be copying the patience of the noble red men, and waiting for dawn. 189