"Oh, dear me!" sighed Janice. "Everybody seems to be fighting everybody else down here. Suppose we are in the middle of a great battle, Marty Day?"
"Hi tunket! It'll be something to tell about when we get back to Polktown."
"If we get back," she shuddered.
"Shucks! of course we will. Though I'd like to stay here and get that mine to working again. I wonder if Uncle Brocky would let me?"
"Marty Day! You're the most awful-talking boy I ever heard. Oh!"
Another volley of rifle shots drowned her voice. They crouched together by the open door of the car and heard the bullets sing past.
"What shall we do if there are really more of the enemy coming?" murmured Janice, after the immediate shower of lead was over.
"Holler 'Viva Méjico!' and let it go at that," grinned Marty. "That goes big with all of 'em."
It was no laughing matter nevertheless, and Marty did not feel half so cheerful as he appeared. But the boy felt it incumbent upon him to keep up the spirits of his cousin.
The sun was coming up, yet the shadows still lay deep upon the mesa. Peering out of the doorway of the car Janice and Marty could see the shifting ranks of the government troops. They retired after each volley. How near, or how many the bandits numbered, the anxious spectators had no means of judging.