As Midnight Jack, with spade and pick on his shoulder, emerged from the place, he uttered a cry which was an oath.
“Thunder and rifles!” he ejaculated, and as the digging implements glided from his hands, he drew his repeating rifle. “The red devils are going to give me more exercise. Well, they shall find that I am eager to keep up the work I began to-night.”
Another shaft cut short the sentence, and the road-agent saw that it sped upward from the depths of the little valley, and just beyond his horse which, with head erect, had snuffed the prowling foe.
“Not dead yet, you dogs!” he cried, recovering just as his horse sunk to the earth bullet-stricken.
“Lie still, Quito! It's life and death with us now,” he said to the horse as he dropped beside him. “I'm hit and so are you, but the bullet that is to kill Midnight Jack isn't carried by the red-livered dogs over there.”
“They shall not get you, Dora. By the gold of Ophir—”
He suddenly stopped, and a startled look filled his eyes.
Midnight Jack sprung to his feet, and uttered the word in all the horror and despair imaginable.
“The red devils have stolen my dearest dead! Oh, you dogs! for this there shall be double vengeance taken.”
He was answered from the further side of the valley. A line of fire leaped from the darkness, and bullets fell all around him.
The moon peeping over the edge of a cloud was revealing a score of horses, upon which dark figures were mounted.
Midnight Jack darted forward, and as he halted for a moment, his rifle sent ten messengers of death into the ranks of the savages.
Wild cries of pain and shrieks of death followed the rapid shots. There was retreating in hot haste; but before the redskins could get beyond the stretching moonlight, two rifles on the road-agent's left opened upon them.
With astonishment Midnight Jack turned upon his reinforcements, to hear these words in a loud, rough voice:—
“Don't let up, youngster, but give 'em all the grim death ye've got in the magazine. Whoop-ee! there they go! I'm the Screamin' Eagle of the Smoky Roost—the Thunderbolt of the Dark-edged Cloud—a reg'lar sky-scraper.”
Instead of smiling, Midnight Jack's brow darkened at these words.
“I didn't want any help,” he muttered. “By the gold of Ophir! I didn't need any.”