Some sleeper, awakened by the noise, yelled a profane command to the animal, which had no effect. It merely awakened another, who cursed the first sleepily.
"Hey, Kelly," he called, "hit that dog with a rock!" A pause. "Hey, Kelly, wake up, there!"
"I guess we've got Kelly," Casey whispered to Sandy. He called out hoarsely: "He'll quit in a minute! G'wan to sleep. You don't know your own luck."
But the dog continued to bark, jumping up and down frantically. A light appeared in a window of one of the shacks.
"Blazes!" muttered McHale, "somebody's getting up."
A low whistle came from behind them. It was significant of the tension of the moment that both McHale and McCrae jumped. But Dunne was cooler.
"That's only Wyndham with the horses," he said.
Suddenly a long aperture of light appeared in the dark wall of the shack. For a moment it was partially obscured by a figure, and then it vanished utterly. The door had closed. The light from the window remained.
"Somebody's come out," said McHale. "That's about where Farwell's shack is. What's keepin' Oscar? He's had time enough. Maybe I'd better go across and hold up this feller? We don't want——"
The lantern bobbed into view once more. Oscar was coming at last, but he was taking his time about it. Had he placed the powder? Had he fired the fuses? Or had something gone wrong at the last moment? They asked themselves these questions impatiently. It would be just like him to have forgotten his matches. It might not occur to him to use the lantern flame. In that case——