She came out then and having repossessed herself of her rifle took up a position well to one side of the shaft's opening where anyone who entered must pass her muzzle, but she did not venture into the passage itself because she was sure that that way lay an ambuscade.
Then, beside the sickly illumination within, she recognized a new waver of kerosene rays from beyond the entrance.
There was no sound, except that of very stealthy feet, and the light came slowly.
Alexander hastened hack to her rock, holding close to the walls of the cavern as she went, then ensconcing herself there, almost invisible in the shadow, she waited with parted lips and a cocked rifle.
CHAPTER XII
Time had hung heavy on Jack Halloway's hands after he had heard Brent announce his departure. The chair scraped on the floor, had been his only assurance that the other had understood him and that might, within possibility, have been a coincidence. Still Brent's promptness in cutting him off on the arrival of the operator had seemed a hopeful sign indicating team-work.
Halloway had declared himself a man who took joy in the savage strain which that civilization had failed to quench out of his nature. Now that strain was mounting into volcano stirrings presaging an eruption. If he could free himself there would ensue a tempest of wreckage about that railroad station such as Samson brought down between the pillars of the temple—but no chances had been taken in his binding.
He did not relish the thought of being left there over night, yet he strongly doubted whether they would venture to take him out on the streets in the sight of possible friends.
He fell to wondering what they would do with him. Except in extremity, they would hardly murder him out of hand, and yet to explain to him why they had treated him so hardly, would be a delicate matter. But the answer lay in the operator's total freedom from suspicion that his captive had read the wire. So far as that backwoods Machiavelli divined, there was no link establishing himself with the conspiracy to rob, and when the time came he thought he could clear his skirts by a simple means.