“Yes; I can hold it down now—so far as boiling over suddenly is concerned. But doing it makes me ugly and bitter inside; makes me chew over a thing until I can’t tell right from wrong in it.... I mean when things are fair and when they’re not. I guess you can see what I’m trying to get at?”
“Yep, I guess I do,” Dick acknowledged. “You’ve chewed over all the things the O. C. folks have been doing or trying to do to us, and it has made you mad inside. So it has me.” Then he grew thoughtful again, working his way back to the thing that was waiting to be decided. When the back-tracking was accomplished he drove a small wedge into the one little crack that offered itself.
“I’m just wondering what Mr. Ackerman would do if he knew all that we know,” he threw out.
“You needn’t wonder about that,” Larry interposed quickly. “The chief stands up so straight that he leans over backward—you know he does. He’d give those O. C. people the benefit of the doubt, every time. No, it’s up to us, Dick. If we keep still about this cave he’ll dynamite the dam, because, so far as he will know, it will be the only thing that can be done. If we tell him, he’ll dynamite this cave outlet, instead—naturally.”
Dick brought his teeth together with a little snap and looked away.
“I’m for keeping still, Larry. Those scamps down yonder need a lesson in fair play.”
Larry got up from his seat on the stone ledge and snuffed the candle with his fingers.
“All right; I’m with you,” he said shortly. And then they made their way out to daylight.
Discoveries a-plenty were awaiting them when they reached the outer air. One was that they had spent a lot more time in the cave than they thought they had and it was now late in the afternoon. Others were that both Mr. Ackerman, and Goldrick, the assistant, were on the ground, and that a telephone connection had been re-established with the camps below the dam.