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The next two hours seemed endless. Mr. Muldoon, tiring of solitaire, had rolled himself up in a corner and was peacefully sleeping, with his injured foot on Aggie’s hop pillow. Aggie and I sat on guard, one on each side of the cave mouth, and stared down at the valley, which was darkening rapidly.

Tish had been gone two hours and a half and no sign of her, when Aggie began to cry softly.

“She’ll never come back!” she whimpered. “The outlaws have got her and killed her. Oh, Tish, Tish!”

“Why would they kill her?” I demanded. “Because she’s trying to buy milk and eggs?”

“B-because she knows too much,” Aggie wailed. “We’ve found their lair, that’s why–don’t tell me this isn’t an outlaw’s cave. It’s just b-built for it. They’ll do away with her and then they’ll come after us.”

Aggie never carries a secret weight in her bosom. She always opens up her heart to the nearest listener. This probably relieves Aggie, but it does not make her a cheerful companion. Eight o’clock and darkness came, and still no Tish. I went into the cave and brought out my gun, and Aggie roused Mr. Muldoon and explained the situation to him. He grew quite white.

“Good heavens!” he exclaimed. “What possessed her anyhow? To the farmhouse! Why, they’ll—-“

His face more than his words convinced us that the matter was really serious. He examined Aggie’s revolver, which he mostly carried in his hip pocket, and, going to the mouth of the cave, listened carefully. Everything was quiet. The cave and both sides of the valley were in deep shadow, but over the ridge of the Camel’s Back across from us there was still a streak of red sunset light. Mr. Muldoon looked and pointed.

Against the background of crimson cloud a man’s figure stood out clearly. He was peering down toward us, although in the dusk he could hardly have seen us, and he carried a gun. Mr. Muldoon smiled faintly.

“Well, they’ve spotted me, I guess,” he said. “I’d better move on before I get you into trouble. They won’t hurt women.”

“Why don’t you shoot him?” Aggie asked. “It would be one bandit less. If you do arrest him, and he gets nearly all his sentence off for good behavior, he’ll be out again in no time, doing more mischief.”

But at that moment we saw the man on the hill throw his gun to his shoulder and aim at something moving below in the valley. Aggie screamed, and I believe I did also.

“Tish!” cried Aggie. “He’s shooting at Tish!” And at that instant the bandit fired. He fired three times, and the noise of his gun echoed backward and forward among the hills. We thought we heard a yell from, the valley. Then the next second there was a faint crack from below and the outlaw’s gun flew out of his hands. Mr. Muldoon’s jaw dropped. “Did you see that?” he said feebly. “Did–you–see–that–shot?”

The outlaw disappeared from the skyline and perhaps ten minutes later Tish crawled up to the cave and put down a tin pail full of milk, a glass of jelly wrapped in a newspaper, and a basket of eggs. Aggie fell on her and cried with joy.

“Be careful of those eggs,” Tish warned her. “That outlaw charged me forty cents a dozen.”

“You gave him a good fright anyhow,” said Aggie fondly.

“Fright?”

“When you shot at him.”

“Oh, that one! I’m talking about the woman at the farm.”

“And–the one on the hill over there?”

“Oh! Well, he fired at me and I fired back. That’s all.”

With an air of exaggerated indifference Tish swaggered into the cave and took off her overshoes.

“Hurry up supper, Ag,” she said–never before or since has she called Aggie “Ag”–“I’m starving.”

She said she had heard little or nothing. She had found the farmhouse, had bought her supplies from a surly woman and had come away again. Asked by Mr. Muldoon if she had seen any men, she said she had seen a farmhand milking. That was all, except the outlaw on the hill.