_ CHAPTER XXIII. RIFLES!
Mira and Blue Pete rested on the ground in the shadows of the clump of spruce that concealed the entrance to their cave, watching the flicker of the setting sun on the smooth surface of the sluggish river. Except for moccasins and blankets they always wore now the Indian disguise in which Torrance and his friends knew them. In the semi-darkness of the trees the old corncob pipe sparked rapidly, sweeter to the halfbreed than nectar, for Mira had held the match that lit it.
Night after night he was content to sit like that, her small hand cuddled in his; but in the evening hours there were so many things to do toward the fulfilment of their dream.
"Jest a coupla weeks more, Mira," he murmured. "Mebbe a few days longer."
"And the last two horses?"
"I'll git 'em somehow. It gits harder every time the bohunks do things, 'cause somebody's allus watchin'. But I never was fooled yet, an' no tenderfoot's goin' to start. . . . Only I don't want no shootin'."
"Perhaps he'll sell now when the time's so near."
Blue Pete laughed mirthlessly. "Yuh don't know Torrance. He said he wudn't, an' that's better'n a million dollars to him."
"But you think he's going to give them to us when he's through?"
She leaned forward anxiously to catch a glimpse of his swarthy face in the dim light, and he did not reply until he had considered it.
"If I was sartin! But if, when I'd lef' 'em to the las' minute, if he took it in his head to pull out with 'em! I dassent take no chances. I gotta have them horses."
He knew by her silence that she was contemplating the possibility of failure.
"If yuh say so, Mira, mebbe I cud git myself to take 'em now an' pull out."
She was fighting the stern battle which in his innocence he had roused in her hungry mind, and for a moment he trembled for the result. Vaguely he felt that he had done something unfair in shifting the responsibility to her shoulders, but whatever her answer he knew what his duty was; and only her wishes could drown that duty.
"Bert is waiting for us down in the Hills," she sighed, not to unsettle his convictions but merely as a fact to be considered.
"Mebbe yuh'd bes' run down an' tell him we'll be a while yet," he replied, understanding her perfectly. "I don't see no way out neither. I'll come 'long soon's I can. Whiskers an' me can git the horses down."
She gurgled softly into the darkness, and clasped his arm with both her hands. Nothing more was necessary. A thrill ran through his big frame, and almost reverently he pressed his dark cheek against her hair.
Thus they sat, until the gleam faded from the water and only a dim glow remained; and the pale sky peeped down through the trees with the chill of a clear moon. High up in the unseen trails of the air a flight of wild geese honked its weary way southward, and the halfbreed read the warning of approaching winter. Some creature splashed into the water straight before them with a noise that awakened the forest echoes and deepened the enveloping silence afterwards. Juno lifted her head and sniffed, and nosed into her mistress. She longed to get into the open and howl, and this was how she fought the instinct. Deepest peace closed down on them with the night.
It was Juno heard the speeders first. With a faint whimper she lifted her ears and sniffed to the east. It was sufficient for Blue Pete. In an instant he had picked out the purring sound and went back into the cave for blanket and moccasins and rifle. When he returned, the throbbing was booming through the woods, though the grade was a mile and a half away, and the speeders miles more.
At first he did not hurry. His move to closer quarters with the oncoming speeders was little more than instinct. He had no reason to be suspicious, but he always wanted to unravel the unknown that was tangible and audible and visible. If the speeders were going through there was no chance of his reaching the grade in time to satisfy his curiosity; if they were stopping at the trestle there was no hurry. With unerring sense he made straight for the trestle.
As he walked along he was conscious of rising concern, of more than ordinary personal connection with the visitors, and in a minute or two he was running in the long easy lope which carries the Indian over incredible distances in a space of time that challenges the ordinary horse.
So that when the rattle of the engines ceased with suspicious suddenness midway between the end-of-steel village and the trestle he was not far from the grade. He deflected his course and presently, with scarcely deepened breath to show the speed at which he had come, he was watching from the shadows a strange scene.
In a long line, soundless but for the hurried tramp of their heavy boots, dim figures emerged from the bush, lifted something from a speeder, and disappeared the way they had come. The first speeder, already unloaded, stood awaiting its companion. Blue Pete saw at first without grasping the meaning. Then a jangle of metal enlightened him.
Rifles--that was what these men were carrying away!
For an agonised moment he felt unequal to the occasion. He knew in a flash what arms portended among these foreign devils. But it was too late to do much to forestall it. One speeder load was gone, and the second was emptying fast. He might frighten the silent porters away and perhaps capture the remainder of their burdens, but that would, at best, rob them of a few dozen rifles, while scores--perhaps hundreds--were by this time secure. And the bohunks would be warned.
A plan developed.
If only he had brought Mira! She could trail almost as well as he, and her wits were quick. Danger or no danger, if only Mira were there to help! On the trail of the last figure he crept, and the chug of the flying speeders roared back to him in diminuendo.
The task he had set himself was an easy one. The man he followed, clumsy and stupid, was anxious only to make speed. In among the trees he led, though not far from the grade, and when at last he stopped and began to rustle among the leaves and dead boughs, Blue Pete knew he had reached the end of the trail. Yet even as the man worked feverishly the halfbreed visualised the spot; and he knew no great cache could be there. It puzzled him, alarmed him.
When the man was gone, and Blue Pete feverishly tore away the brush and leaves, he realised with a pang of shame and alarm how he had been outwitted. The rifles had been removed armful by armful. And armful by armful they had been hidden, each in its own hiding place. There was no common cache to rob, no possibility now of laying hands on the lot.
In deep dejection the halfbreed returned to the cave with his burden. Mira met him at the door without even a murmur of surprise. And as he dumped the load noisily on the stone floor, she pointed to another little pile in a distant niche.
"They've beat us, Pete. It was Werner I trailed. I just banged him over the head with a stick and he dropped everything and bolted."
And Blue Pete chuckled. He could see only one picture: Werner, running and tumbling through the forest, squealing with more fright than pain, preparing as he ran a tall story for his leader. _