"Did I fire at you? I thought it was another charge coming. They had been trying to rush me."
"So I inferred. We camped down out of range and gave you plenty of time. You may be no marksman, but"—He finished the sentence in dumb show by taking off his hat and pointing to a bullet score in the crown of it. "A few inches lower and you would have spoiled your first chance of capitalizing the Midas. How do you feel this morning?"
"A bit unresponsive, but better than I have a right to expect. What became of the two raiders?"
"We met them riding a steeplechase toward town. You discouraged them, as I said. From Donald's count of the bullet-splashes on that bald summit you must have gotten in your work pretty lively."
Jeffard lowered the hammer of the rifle and emptied the magazine. "It's a good weapon," he said. "I believe I could learn to shoot with it, after a while. Will you sell it?"
"Not to any one. But I'll make you a present of it. Let's go in and see what Donald has found in his saddle-bags. It's a fine breakfast morning."
So they went into the cabin and sat at meat on either side of a rough table of Garvin's contriving, and were served by a solemn-faced Scot, whose skill as a camp cook was commensurate with his ability to hold his tongue. Notwithstanding the presumable urgencies the breakfast talk was not of business. Jeffard would have had it so, but Denby forbade.
"Not yet," he objected. "Not until you have caught up with yourself. After breakfast Donald will sling you a blanket hammock under the trees, and you shall sleep the clock around. Then you'll feel fit, and we can talk futures if you please."
If there were a prompting of suspicion in the glance with which Jeffard met this proposal it remained in abeyance. With every embrasure gunned and manned the fortress of this life must always be pregnable on the human side; in the last resort one must trust something to the chance of loyalty in the garrison. Wherefore Jeffard accepted the promoter's pipe and the blanket hammock, and fell asleep while Donald was pulling down the barricade at the tunnel's mouth preparatory to liberating the neighing horse stabled in the heading.
It was evening, just such another as that one three months agone, in the heart of which two men had sat at the cabin door looking a little into each other's past, when Jeffard opened his eyes. The three horses, saddled, but with loose cinches, were cropping the sun-cured grass on the level which served as a dooryard for the cabin; and an appetizing smell of frying bacon was abroad in the air. Jeffard sat up yawning, and the promoter rose from the doorstep and rapped the ashes from his pipe.