"Yep!" came the gloomy answer.
"Seen anything of Lundi?"
"Nope!" on a deeper tone of gloom. Gay touched Tryon's shoulder.
"Make him come, too," she whispered.
"I'm just taking a run out to the Glendora," announced Tryon. "Want to come?"
"I do," said Guthrie, with laconic significance, and climbed in beside the driver. They flipped through the night at thirty miles an hour, which was as much as Tryon dared risk on such a road. The Glendora was about ten miles off. Gay, furled in the big coat and kindly darkness, could hear the two men exchanging an occasional low word, but little was said. It was doubtful whether Guthrie knew who Tryon's other passenger was.
In time, the clanking and pounding of a battery smote their ears, and the twinkling myriad lights of a mining camp were spread across the darkness. One large wood-and-iron house, standing alone on rising ground, well back from the road, was conspicuously brilliant. The doors were closed, but lights and the sound of men's voices raised in an extraordinary uproar streamed from its open, unblinded windows and fanlights. Abruptly Tryon turned the car so that it faced for home, halted it in the shadow of some trees, and jumping out, strode toward the house, followed by Guthrie and Gay.
Almost as they reached it, the door was flung open, and a man came out and stood in the light. He was passing his hand over his eyes and through his hair in an odd gesture that would have told Gay who he was, even if every instinct in her had not recognized Druro. The pandemonium in the house had fallen suddenly to a great stillness, but as Guthrie and Tryon reached the house, it broke forth again with increased violence, and a number of men rushed out and laid hands on Druro as if to detain him. He flung them off in every direction; a couple of them fell scrambling and swearing over the low rail of the veranda. Then, several spoken sentences, terse, and clean-cut as cameos, fell on the night air.
"Come on home, Lundi; we have a car here."
"I tell you he has killed Capperne! Capperne is dead as a bone!"