"That wouldn't save us. They'd butchah us, anyway. Nevah yuh worry.
Before they get us, they'll find that The Wolf, from Texas, has teeth!"
"Then we'll play out the hand," agreed Robbins.
"To the last cahd," Kid Wolf drawled. "I have two hands heah that can turn up twelve lead aces fo' a show-down. And I have anothah ace—a steel one, that's always in the deck."
The Texan saw as well as the others how desperate the situation had become. He knew that death would be the probable outcome for all of them.
Kid Wolf, however, was not a type of man who gave up. If they must go out, he decided, they would go out fighting.
The sun climbed the sky and disappeared over the distant blue range to the west, leaving the desert behind bathed in warm reds and soft purples. Then the shadows deepened, and night fell.
With it came a full moon, riding high out of the southeast—a pumpkin-colored, gigantic Arizona moon that changed to shining silver. Its light illuminated the scene and turned the landscape nearly as bright as day. This was a fact in favor of the three men cornered in the adobe. The attackers dared not show themselves in a rush. All night long their guns cracked, and they continued to do so when the east was beginning to lighten with the dawn.
Another day, and it proved to be one of torment. There was no water. Before the hour of noon, the three besieged men were suffering from intense thirst. The little adobe was like an oven. The sun burned down pitilessly, distorting the air with waves of heat, and drawing mocking mirages in the sky. Bullets still hummed and buzzed about them. Every hissing slug seemed to whistle the mournful tune of "Death—death—death!" Late in the afternoon, the elder Robbins could endure the torture no longer.
"I'm goin' after water!" he cried.
Neither his son nor Kid Wolf could reason with him. He would not listen. He reasoned that although it was death to venture to the spring, it was also death to remain. He was nearly crazed with thirst.