“What’s the meaning of all this? I don’t understand it.”
“There are six on each side; that evens matters; shall you start the music or do you prefer to have the captain fire the opening gun?”
“But you haven’t told me what this means.”
“It means that Captain Dawson and Corporal Bob Parker have drunk from the same canteen.”
It must be conceded that Colonel Briggs had one merit; no one was quicker than he to grasp a situation. So long as there were nine men on one side and three on the other, the success of the former was promising. He meant to crowd the defiant miners to the wall and would have done so but for the unprecedented turn of affairs. Now it was six to six and he knew the mettle of the three recruits that had joined the miners. Bob Parker was the most terrific fighter in the whole company. He was one of those men, occasionally seen, who was absolutely without fear. He would have stood up alone and fought the other eight. During that single week in Sacramento, he gained the name of a terror and caused a sigh of relief on the part of the authorities when he left for the mountains.
The corporal always fired to kill, and his skill with rifle and pistol was marvelous. While talking with Colonel Briggs, he fixed his brilliant black eyes on him, as if to intimate that he had selected him for his pet antagonist. All this was disconcerting.
In this crisis, when every nerve was drawn tense and the question of life and death hung on the passing of a breath, Colonel Briggs leaned backward and elevating his chin in the way that had become familiar, emitted 253 one of his resounding laughs. Then he abruptly snapped his jaws together like the springing of a trap.
“Why, Bob, this puts a different face on things,” he said cheerily; “if the man’s a friend of yours, of course we can’t quarrel with him.”
“I rather think not,” replied the corporal.