"What—back to the Rock House?" she protested indignantly. "And leave you here to be killed! No, Hall, I am going to stay."
"Well, that is your right," he responded, after a silence. "God knows I'll protect you, if I can. How many did you say there were?"
"Oh, were you going to fight them? Why not leave it to——But no, I know you too well. There are eight or ten of them, Hall."
"And since your life and mine are involved in it now——"
"You can tell them," she consented, and sighed.
The Bassetts listened grimly as he told the brief story of Isham and his Slash-knife killers, and then Winchester held out his hand.
"Don't you worry," he said, with a smile to Allifair, "we'll take care of you, lady—and him. All we needed was to know their little game."
He stepped out jauntily as he laid her a bed by the fire and then took his brothers outside. What he said Hall never knew but when they came back even Sharps had a friendly smile.
They slept till daylight—or lay in their blankets—and at dawn there was a man at every loop-hole, searching the country for the first sight of the gunmen. The sun was just up when they appeared In the north, riding down on the Turkey Creek trail: but as they left the brush two men fell behind and disappeared in the creek bed.