“Look, we’ll wait, and risk one more small Jump. If

Sheriff Paul turned quickly. Elena, frightened, clapped two little hands over her mouth. Rosa shrugged indifferently, and tipping back her small, black head, listened to the music in the ballroom.

"Madam," to Rosa, "you sent for me, making strange promises which, for the safety of this community, I hope that you are now pleased to keep."

Without lowering her chin she looked at him through sinister, narrowed eyelids, and a smile of triumphant malice touched her face.

"Senor, I make no promises which I fail to keep," she answered, "and there is also a promise which I made Senor Tom Bell - "

"There is some one knocking at the cellar door," said Tom Bell to Phillips. "See who is there, and be careful that you let no one in without the bullet and the password."

"Tom, I'm afraid," whined Driscoll "that Spanish devil's promised to get you hung more than once lately, and last night I know she sent that Mexican Jose of hers out somewhere with a string and bullet. I saw them - "

"What! Why didn't you tell me before? Listen! Phillips is in trouble! Go help him! Call the boys! Hurry!" As Jim Driscoll, with a halt in his walk, left him, Tom Bell stole quietly to one of the tunnels and ran to the trap-door which opened into an outhouse.

He found the corral full of saddle-horses and the Mountaineer House completely surrounded by Sheriff Paul's, posse.