“Well, there ain’t a ghost of a show for us to make a run for the front door; they’ve got that plum’ sewed up. We got to work it some other way. We’d ort to have one o’ them Winchesters o’ youm and a belt o’ ca’tridges. That old hoss-pistol won’t spit far enough to do much good.”
“But if we had the rifle?” Philip queried.
“Then we might work a li’l’ trick that’d be better than breakin’ into the cabin: might make them cusses think the whole U.S. army was after ’em.”
Philip’s heart rose into his throat and threatened to choke him. On the hurried race across the spur his teeth had been chattering, and it was only by the supremest effort that he could keep them from rattling like castanets now. If the extra rifle was to be secured, it was his part to stalk the cabin and get it: Garth couldn’t do it; Bromley wouldn’t surrender the gun to a stranger—if he were still alive it was more than likely that he would mistake Garth for one of the outlaws and kill him if he could find a convenient loophole through which to shoot.
Philip felt a cold sweat starting out all over his body. If he could only summon the flaming rage fit that had possessed him on the night when he had flung himself upon the drink-crazed prospector in the bar-room of the Leadville hotel ... he prayed for its return, but it wouldn’t come. By a curious telepathic prickling he knew that the big man crouching beside him sensed his condition, and his shame was complete.
“You skeered?” queried Garth in a hoarse whisper.
“As scared as hell!” was the gritting reply. “Just the same, I’m going after that extra gun. What shall I do after I get it?”
“First off, you tell yer pardner to hold his hand till he hears the big racket beginnin’, and then to blaze away like sin at anything in sight. Next, you keep right on down the gulch and make a round and get on the hill behind that bunch o’ saplin’s. When you’re all set and ready, blaze away, and I’ll whale at ’em from up here, and yer pardner’ll chip in from the cabin. If that don’t stampede them cusses, nothin’ will.”
Philip tightened his belt. “I’ll probably get killed trying, but here’s f-for it,” he stammered; and in a chilling frenzy of the teeth-chattering he began to worm his way down the gulch toward the dump and the cabin.
How he contrived to drag himself over the short three hundred yards, with every nerve and muscle straining to turn the advance into a shameful retreat, he never knew. Every time another gunshot crashed upon the night silence he fancied he was the target and flattened himself with the blood slowly congealing in his veins. None the less he kept on, hugging the shadows and taking advantage of every inequality of the ground that would afford even the scantiest cover.