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 any good, the creek bank where Graball stood saddled and ready to go was behind him nearly a hundred yards, the way to it blocked by bushes, the ground rough for a man to make his get-away across on foot. Besides that, he was not ready to retreat; he would not be ready to retreat until he could no longer pump a cartridge into his gun.

To the left of him a little way, roughly estimated forty feet, there was a clump of sage, ancient and grey, with the dead wood of many years in the center of its slowly spreading ring. After the manner of this grim, deep-rooted desert shrub the soil had heaped around it as snow drifts around a shock of corn. Here it held in a little hummock against the attrition of wind and water, the solemn plant fortifying itself to withstand drought and fire in its island by clinging to every particle of soil whisked to it on the desert winds.

Rawlins drove back the two who pressed in nearest with a few quick shots not intended to knock anybody off his horse, for he did not want to hurt a man of them if they could be dispersed without it. He hoped to cut their horses from under them, knowing very well from the way they rode and slung their guns with little snapping jerks, elbows against their ribs, that they would be as helpless as worms on foot. They were range men; panic would defeat them when they saw their horses begin to go.

As Rawlins dropped behind the clump of sage after 'a breathless spurt to reach it, a bullet spread a fan of dust before his face. He thought they had him, blinded a moment by the dust, but the bullet must have struck after he hit the ground. It was only dust in the