“Nope. Them cholo women would jump us in the back in a minute. Then, if anything went wrong, the bunch would scatter in the darkness. We don’t know the lay o’ the ground.”
“All right. Then stick to our original plan.”
Sagebrush dissented with a grunt. “Pardner, it means the females fight with the men. Now, I jest naturally can’t abide that notion nohow. When it comes to puttin’ a bullet into a female, I pass. We got to sep’rate them fellers from the females.”
“Granted,” assented Ramsay at once. “How?”
“There aint but one way out o’ this yere cañon—the front way. Let’s you and me go back through that hole in the wall and wait. If anybody comes, we got him; if anybody leaves, we got him. Then, come sunup, we lights a fire out beyond. They see the smoke, and most likely that feller Ximines comes out to investigate. We got him. The other fellers come out when he don’t return—and we got ’em all.”
“Good,” said Ramsay. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER IX
All that night coyotes howled dismally upon the hills; and Ramsay, stretched out beside Sagebrush near the “hole in the wall,” wakened from time to time at their almost human cries.
The scheme proposed by the old desert rat was simple and promised to be highly effective. It had only one drawback, common to all human propositions—it failed to take into account the dispensations of Providence, not anticipating the unexpected.
The misty gray darkness that precedes dawn was over everything when Ramsay, on watch, awakened Sagebrush, and the desert rat sat up, shivering.