"I'm getting tired of it, I tell you. Three of our men are wounded now, and that red-headed beggar is going to die, and he was such a good cook."
The speaker laughed unpleasantly at his gruesome joke.
"Well, we can't do it now, because we don't know how they're situated. We'd have had them when they all rushed out a few minutes ago if you hadn't shot at them so soon, and driven them indoors again. Why didn't you let them get into the open, where we could have shot them down?"
Stella shuddered at the cold-blooded tone in which these men discussed the killing of the boys, but Ted only smiled, for he knew that Burk was at heart a coward, and that he did not care to rush, nor would he stand a rush should one come.
He wished he was back in the house and knew the enemy's situation as well as he did now. He would not give them time to run very far.
If he could communicate to the boys in some manner the exact situation, he felt confident that the thing would be over in a very short time.
"I say, Strong, I've a proposition to make to you," said Burk, after a silence.
"Well, out with it," said Ted coldly.
"There's no use of any more of us being hurt or killed," said Burk, looking at Ted out of the corner of his eye.
"Then why don't you quit shooting and vamose?"