Moran warned! It seemed impossible. Who could have given warning? Jim named over mentally those who knew what was afoot. Zaanan Frame—he had not talked. Allen—he, too, was a safe man. Grierson—oxen could not have drawn a word from him. Marie Ducharme? She knew. Jim had seen Moran going to her but an hour before. Marie Ducharme. He would not believe she could be guilty of such a betrayal of confidence. It was not in her to commit such an act. Yet she had not seemed herself. Something had happened. She had been afraid. Jim closed his eyes, bit his under lip. No one else who knew could have given the warning. The opportunity had been hers. The logic of events bore against her.
Jim turned to Gilders.
“Can you lead me to town the way you came?”
“Yes.”
“Tim Bennett, you’re boss of the gang that goes to the camp. I’ll take ten men away from you. You’ll have thirty—it ought to be enough. You”—he pointed to a man—“come with me, and you and you and you.” He selected his men. “On the jump,” he said to Gilders, and at the heels of their guide they plunged headlong to re-enforce the party that had gone before.
Jim held a match to his watch. It was fifteen minutes past ten. They had three-quarters of an hour to reach a point that could not be reached in less than an hour. When they arrived the battle for the roundhouse would have been on a quarter of an hour. If Moran’s party were strong enough that quarter of an hour might spell defeat for the whole enterprise. If the first attacking party could hold out until Jim arrived—
“Hustle,” Jim said, briefly, and saved his breath for the exertion before him.
The men went silently now, grimly. The smell of imminent battle was in their noses. Ahead of them were comrades facing uneven odds. It was not simply to fight that they hurried, but to succor their friends. Jim’s legs, untrained to woods travel, cried out for rest, but his will compelled them on.
At last lights shone below them, the black tube of the Diversity Company’s smokestack lifted into the star-shimmering sky—ten minutes would take them to it. They heard a sudden, distant shout, other shouts, a babel of sounds subdued by distance. The fight for the roundhouse was on. The attacking party had struck, had met surprising resistance.
“Run!” shouted Jim.