After a space he came to an angle where the cliff turned abruptly west and dwindled sharply in height. He remembered what the Major had said—the upper entrance of the cave came out on the highest crest of the hill. He turned back to retrace his painful way. The smell of dawn was in the air; the east sparkled. No sound came from the ambush all around. The end was near.
He passed by his starting-point; he crept on by slide and bush and stone. The moon magic faded and paled, mingled with the swift gray of dawn. He held his perilous way. Cold sweat stood on his brow. If Foy or a foe of Foy were on the cliff now, how easy to topple down a stone upon him! The absolute stillness was painful. A thought came to him of Stella Vorhis—her laughing eyes, her misty hair, the little hand that had lingered upon his own. Such a little, little hand!
Before him a narrow slit opened in the wall—such a crevice as the
Major had described.
"Foy! Oh, Foy!" he called. No answer came. He raised his voice a little louder. "Foy! Speak if you're there! It's Pringle!"
A gentle voice answered from the cleft:
"Let us hope, for your sake, that you are not mistaken about that. I should be dreadfully vexed if you were deceiving me. The voice is the voice of Pringle, but how about the face? I can only see your back."
"I would raise my head, so you could take a nice look by the well-known cold gray light of the justly celebrated dawn," rejoined Pringle, "if I wasn't reasonably sure that a rifle shot would promptly mar the classic outlines of my face. They're all around you, Foy. Hargis, he gave you away. Don't show a finger nail of yourself. Let me crawl up behind that big rock ahead and then you can identify me."
"It's you, all right," said Foy when Pringle reached the rock and straightened himself up.
"I told you so," said Pringle, peering into the shadows of the cleft. "I can't see you. And how am I going to get to you? There are twenty men with point-blank range. I'm muddy, scratched, bruised, tired and hungry, sleepy and cross—and there's thirty feet in the open between here and you, and it nearly broad daylight. If I try to cross that I'll run twenty-five hundred pounds to the ton, pure lead. Well, we can put up a pretty nifty fight, even so. You go back to the other outlet of your cave and I'll stay here. I'm kinder lonesome, too…. Toss me some cartridges first. I only got five. I left in a hurry. You got forty-fives?"
"Plenty. But you can't stay there. They'll pot you from the top of the bluff, first off. Besides, you got a canteen, I see. You back up to that mountain mahogany bush, slip under it, and worm down through the rocks till you come to a little scrub-oak tree and a big granite bowlder. They'll give you shelter to cross the ridge into a deep ravine that leads here where I am. You'll be out of sight all the way up once you hit the ravine. I'd—I'd worm along pretty spry if I was you, going down as far as the scrub oak—say, about as swift as a rattlesnake strikes—and pray any little prayers you happen to remember. And say, Pringle, before you go … I'm rather obliged to you for coming up here; risking taking cold and all. If it'll cheer you up any I'll undertake that anyone getting you on the trip will think there's one gosh-awful echo here."