“Thought so! Now, since you do understand plain English, let me urge you to tell me where I’ll find your camp. Of course you have one, for you’re too well nourished and too well dressed to be living off the country. You won’t talk? Then you are likely to catch cold in that wound, lying out here all night. And I can assure you that a bullet wound—especially in the body—can give plenty of trouble if neglected.”
The thin, vindictive mouth, clamped shut in that thick unkempt beard, might have been dumb for all the sound that issued from it.
Abington rose and went seeking here and there with a light hoping to discover some sign of a camp, or at least a trail that would lead to one. He did not succeed, but he did find the field glasses which had been dropped or cannily hidden under a bush, where they might have been overlooked if the light had not brought a reflection from the lenses. He was looking them over when, from up on the ridge where the sheep had disappeared, a voice that could belong to no man save Bill shouted anxiously:
“Hullo! That you down there, professor?”
Abington swung the lamp toward the sound, moving it three times up and-down, the signal to advance which they had found convenient in old caves and tunnels where a shout might bring down upon their heads a small avalanche of loose rock.
“Was that you shooting? You hurt?”
“Come on down, Bill,” Abington called. “There’s a path, if you can find it in the dark.” And as an afterthought, he added: “No, I’m not hurt.”
Good old Bill, to ask that question with just that demanding note of worry in his voice! Abington remembered what he had been thinking when he pulled and aimed his automatic, and he had the conscience to blush for the thought. Of course Bill was no traitor! His eager, hurried voice betrayed long hours of frantic searching in that maze of narrow gorges that twisted and turned and crisscrossed so bewilderingly.
Abington smiled under his beard as he listened to the clattering of small rocks on the hillside beyond the pool. Presently Bill Jonathan’s familiar figure—never had Abington seen a more welcome sight!—came lurching into the light zone, half running, with that little swing of the shoulders that told of strength.