The red dawn faded quickly to a keen white light. Heat waves ran over
the rocks and danced down the hillside. Waring lighted a match and
blackened the front sight of his carbine. The sun rolled up and struck
at him, burning into the pocket of rock where he lay motionless gazing
down the slope. Sweat beaded his forehead and trickled down his nose.
Scattered boulders seemed to move gently. He closed his eyes for an
instant. When he opened them he thought he saw a movement in the brush
below. The heat burned into his back, and he shrugged his shoulders. A
tiny bird flitted past and perched on the dry, dead stalk of a yucca.
Again Waring thought he saw a movement in the brush.

Then, as if by magic, the figure of a rural stood clear and straight
against the distant background of brownish-green. Waring smiled. He knew
that if he were to fire, the rurales would rush him. They suspected some
kind of a trap. Waring's one chance was to wait until they had given up
every ruse to draw his fire. They were not certain of his whereabouts,
but were suspicious of that natural fortress of rock. There was not a
rural in Old Mexico who did not know him either personally or by
reputation. The fact that one of them had offered himself as a possible
target proved that they knew they had to deal with a man as crafty as
themselves.

The standing figure, shimmering in the glare, drew back and disappeared.

Waring eased his tense muscles. "Now they'll go back for their horses,"
he said to himself. "They'll ride up to the next ridge, where they can
look down on this pocket, but I won't be here."

Waring planned every move with that care and instinct which marks a good