“It won’t be his very long,” remarked McGowan.
Men in the West who know each other, also know each other’s horses. So Brownie was at once recognized. There was nothing wrong to the men in Brownie’s coming to where his master was, nothing at all wrong in that. But to Mack it meant everything. His horse would never come unless called or sent. So he must have been sent. That meant that Smiles was at hand and had taken this method of letting him know that it was his move.
He could blow out one of the lights and kick the other one over. It would require quick, instantaneous action, but it could be done. Should he then rush forward and out? They would shoot him if he did. No, he would make his rush, but it would be to the back of the cave. He would make an attempt to escape in the dark when the opportunity came. If he only had his gun!
Yes, he must make them think he was rushing out.
“You know, Pete,” he talked even as he was thinking, “I could forgive everything but one thing. The horse is mine, now and always. My not wearing a gun makes no difference. When I go, my horse goes with me. And I reckon I’m—”
There was sudden, intense darkness.
“—going now.”
Something crashed the next instant. There was much noise, voices, pistol shots. A pause of a few minutes. In that pause Mack had managed to get outside of the cave. The men inside were uncertain, hesitating because they were sure they had heard shots from the outside. They did not know what to do.
Probably, too, it would have been a good time for the men on the outside to have closed in on the outlaws. But they also were uncertain and the dark in those first few minutes helped the men on the inside. As the two factions each hesitated, a voice came to them from the outside.
“I reckon, Smiles, you can go to it.” It was the voice of Mack. And even as he spoke there were answering shots from the men within at the place from which the voice had come.