"Damn it, Hype, listen! You know what'd happen then as well as I do. Suppose he did fix the pardons, even willingly. D'you think we'd ever get out here to this gold again? Never! We could never beat out the Chiswell interests."
Garth, smiling thinly, looked straight at Prokle. "Sure, I realize that perfectly. You want the gold, sure. But to get it, and get away with it, you're going to have to dispose of Chiswell over there. And if you do that, there goes my one chance of a pardon. Nice little stalemate, huh?"
And Garth, as he watched his partner's indecision, was suddenly enjoying the grim stalemate. But Prokle wasn't. He stared sullenly at Garth for a moment, rubbed his chin and grumbled baffledly in his throat.
Garth grinned back at him.
Suddenly across to them came Chiswell's jumbled words again, this time tinged with fear:
"Whispering, are you? I hear you over there, plotting. You just try it! ... rob me—no! ... ah-h-h! ... two of 'em! ... two ... no, you can't! ... it isn't fair, I'm all alone!" This time his voice ended in a little sob of terror, perhaps because he realized for the first time the odds against him; perhaps because he remembered that he'd thrown his gun away.
Garth, from where he lay, reached out and threw a handful of dry matted lichen upon the fire. For only a few seconds it blazed up, to reveal Chiswell crouched before his cave, a wild sight, trembling and waiting.
And it revealed something else.
"Look!" Again Prokle grabbed Garth's arm in his excitement.