A rifle bullet spattered on the rock above him, and he postponed decision. “Needs thinking over,” he told himself. “We’ll see what we will see.”
They held him in siege all that afternoon, and toward sunset brought a barrel of kerosene from town. Men climbed the hill above the cave, where the bullets could not reach them, and poured this oil so that it ran down into a pool just in front of his retreat. Then they set fire to it. He saw at once that he could not endure the smoke and gas, and after some preparations shouted his surrender.
They bade him come out with his hands in the air, and he did so. His boots were somewhat scorched by the flames. Then they tied his hands behind his back and his ankles beneath the horse’s belly, and took him back to town. Toward dusk he was lodged in the calaboose there, and Nick Russ, the deputy, went on guard outside.
VI
About nine o’clock that night Bud Loupel came to the calaboose and asked if he could talk with Mills. Russ told him to go ahead. Bud asked permission to talk privately; and, though Russ was inclined to protest, he was at length persuaded. The deputy moved away from the little, one-room building, and Bud went inside. Mills was confined in a rude cell of two-by-four timbers. Bud approached these bars, and Jack came to meet him.
Loupel was sweating faintly. “For God’s sake, Jack,” he whispered. “This is terrible!”
Mills grinned. “Well,” he agreed. “It looks right critical to me.”
“If Rand hadn’t happened to get back ahead of time.... Hadn’t come in right then....”
“You didn’t happen to know he was coming, I don’t reckon.”
Loupel cried: “No, no, Jack. Honest to God!”