“Think you could get it all done at noon, while the men are away?”
“Yes, easy.”
“Very well, now listen; you are to get everything ready so that it will be nothing but ’a touch and a go,’ as soon as I say the word, understand? Get everything ready this noon, give the men warning that there’s going to be some blasting, and then, as quick as you’ve had your dinner, you be around here prompt, and stay within sight of this room till I send you word to quit. You know the rest, what directions Blaisdell left the last time he was here; you know what you’re to wait for, and if you get a signal from me, you know what you’re to do.”
“You bet I do, and I’ll do a damned good job, too,” Maverick replied, with a grin; “but what’s the signal, boss?”
“Let me see, I want something you’ll recognize without any trouble, and that nobody else would notice, or think meant anything. Where will you be?”
“Out there, behind them rocks; I can see your winders plain from there.”
“Yes, but if I made you any signal there, or put anything in the window, others would see it as well as yourself.”
“I’ll tell you what, boss,” said Maverick, glancing at the window on the right of Haight’s desk, where hung an old, dilapidated shade, which had been lowered its full length in an effort to keep out the intolerable heat, “you let that there shade hang jest as it is till you want me, and when I see that yanked up, I’ll know what it means, and you’ll hear from me in jest about ten minits at the latest. But say, boss, what’s all this racket about, anyhow? Some o’ them eastern chaps comin’ out here?”
“That’s none of your business, Jim,” said Haight in a joking way, “you attend to what you’ve been told, and don’t meddle with what don’t concern you.”
“Is old Cameron comin’ out here?” persisted Maverick, with an expression of fear and hatred combined, visible in his countenance.