"Come on, then," answered Geordie, grasping the stout collar of the hickory shirt, and come he had to, moaning and imploring. With revolver in his right hand, his unwilling interpreter in the left, Geordie scrambled down to the roadway, and then, coming in view of the gang, crouched with his prisoner behind sheltering bowlders, regardless of the shots which began to hiss from below. The speaker was still shouting; his words were easily heard. Yells of approval and savage delight punctuated every other sentence. "What was that?" demanded Geordie, as the applause became furious.
"He say they make circle—all sides, uphill, sidehill, downhill. They all together run in when he give the word."
"He fights like a Cheyenne," grinned the young commander. "How soon do they begin?"
"Right off; now! They come from all round!" was the almost agonized cry.
"Then I won't have to lug you back. You can go!"
And like a frightened hare the young foreigner darted away, dodging and diving up the slope, only to fall exhausted at the top, and then to creep on all-fours to the shelter of the office. Already some of the armed rioters had managed to climb far up the hill-side and from behind rock or ledge to open fire on the platform. The range was full three hundred yards, their aim was poor, and the bullets flew wild, but the effect on this poor lad was all they could ask. He collapsed at the opening door.
Leisurely, yet cautiously, Geordie climbed in his tracks—went first to the office to give warning to Nolan, then round to the compressor to instruct the little guard. Cawker poked a head from a window and looked anxiously toward the gaping mouth of the ravine. The darkness of night was already settling in its gloomy depths. The homely shed looked black and forbidding. Aloft on each side were precipitous slopes affording but slight foothold. Little likelihood was there of rioters sliding down to attack them, but, suppose they pried loose, or blasted out, some of those huge rocks up the mountain and sent them rolling, bounding, crashing down? What might then happen?
A bullet tearing through the shingling, ten feet above Cawker's protruding head, made him jerk it in, like a turtle, but presently it reappeared at the window.
"It's the dynamite I'm thinking of," said he. "A rock lighting on that now—"
"Where is it?" interrupted Graham.