It was barely nine o'clock. Below him, perhaps twenty yards downhill, was his nearest sentry. Above him, and a little retired, was another, a silent young German-American who had been at the head of the men working tunnel Number Two. Beyond him still, and thrown back toward the head of the ravine, was one of Cawker's guard, a sharp-eyed, sharp-witted chap who had seemed at first to chafe at Graham's hints and orders, yet had acted on them. And on these two, so far as sound could enable him to judge, all ignorant of their presence and purpose, this uncouth mass of men was bearing down. Winchester in hand and, as he himself said later, his heart in his mouth, Geordie stole swiftly uphill to the post of the German and found him kneeling and all aquiver with excitement. He, too, had just heard.
"Don't fire till I do," said Graham. "I'll be right out where you can hear me challenge." A few steps higher he climbed, and then called low and clear:
"D'you hear them coming, guard? Can you see anything?"
And the answer came in the drawl of the Southland:
"Hyuh 'em plain 'nuff, but they don't show a light yet. Reckon they don't mean tuh."
"We'll give them the fill of our magazines if they don't halt at the word. Wait till I let drive, then let them have it!"
And so, crouching low, straightforward along the slope he sped, till, perhaps twenty yards out, the black bulk of the mountain-side loomed between him and the westward heaven, while against the stars of the northern horizon he could dimly determine, heaving steadily toward him, not fifty paces away, some huge, murmuring, moving mass. And then there rang out on the silence of the night, clear, stern, and commanding, a voice the like of which their ears had never heard, in words that even they could not fail to comprehend:
"Halt where you are—or we fire!"
There was an instant of recoil and confusion and fear. Then furious tones from far back in the throng and guttural shoutings that seemed urging them on, for, presently, on they came, but in the silence and dread of death.
Back went the lever of Graham's Winchester; slap went the bolt to its seat, with the shining cartridge ahead of it; up came the butt to the shoulder; and then, once more, that deep, virile voice rang along the heights and went echoing away across the gorge. Back at the mine Nolan's heart leaped at the sound of it. Away down in the village they heard it and shrank, for the next instant set them all shrieking; for the lightning flashed and the rifles barked loud and swift, and strong men howled and turned and fled, anywhere out of the way, and some fell headlong, screaming and cursing, in the rush and panic that spread from one stern and sudden word—the soldier command: "Fire!"