Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/102

 croaked," commanded a harsh voice. Just as a handkerchief was fumbled across his eyes he saw a ring of horsemen surround the sheep wagon and start shooting through its canvas sides; saw the door flung open and Miguez stagger out, hands high above his head and blood on his shirt. In another minute he was lying, hogtied from neck to heels and blindfolded, and he knew from the feeble sound of cursing in the Basque tongue that Miguez, still alive, was lying beside him.

The riders dismounted and threw a handful of brush on to the dying embers of the cook fire; then as red arrows began to flicker upward, they seized the tongue of the sheep wagon and drew that cumbersome house on wheels directly over the blaze. The fire played along the bottom of the wagon floor, licked round the sides and finally caught the canvas housing. A wide fiery pillar leaped upward, lighting all the little cup of the hills where lay the sheep; their huddled gray shapes were cut out of the blackness by the red glow; the clutter of woolly backs in the cup of the hills stirred restlessly like moving scum on a bubbling pot.

The mounting pillar of flame put the whole