There was, of course, the grain in the packs, but there was neither time nor opportunity to get it out.

If it came to a siege, luck and his boys were in a bad way, and they knew it.

They were penned as well as protected there in that rocky, brushy neck.

The most that they could do was to discourage any rush from those back in the grove; as to getting through that grove themselves, and out in the open, there was not one chance in a hundred that they could do it.
From the outside in to where they were entrenched was just a trifle easier.

The Indiana in the grove were all absorbed in watching the edge of the Frying-pan and had their backs to the open, never thinking that white men would be coming that way; for had not the other party been decoyed around the farther end of the big butte, and did not several miles and a barbed-wire fence lie between?
So when Applehead and his three, coming in from the north, approached the grove, they did it under cover of a draw that hid them from sight.
From the shots that were fired, Applehead guessed the truth; that Luck's bunch had sensed danger before they had actually ridden into the Frying-pan itself, and that the Navajos were trying to drive them out of the rocks, and were not making much of a success of it.
"Now," Applehead instructed the three when they were as close as they could get to the grove without being seen, "I calc'late about the best thing we kin do, boys, is t' spur up our hosses and ride in amongst 'em shooting and a-hollerin'.