When Latisan walked away from Lida the mist again had lent its illusion, and he seemed to become of heroic size before the gray screen hid him from her sight.
Vittum tried pathetically to relieve the stress of the silence.
“The last peek at him made him look big enough to do ’most anything he sets out to do.”
“Yes! But how can he fight them all single-handed?” She was pale and trembling.
“If I’m any judge, by the direction he took just now he has gone up and tapped our stock of canned thunder, miss. And if I ain’t mistook about his notions, he is going to sound just about as big as he looked when we got that last peek!”
The rivermen did not lounge on the ground, as they usually did when they were resting. They stood, tensely waiting for what Latisan’s manner of resolution had promised.
Lida asked no more questions; she was unable to control her tones. She had been given a hint of Ward’s intentions by what the old man had said about the “canned thunder.” She did not dare to be informed as to the probable details of those intentions; to know fully the nature of the risk he was running would have made the agony of her apprehensiveness unendurable.
It seemed to them, waiting there, that what Latisan had undertaken was never going to happen. They were not checking off the time in minutes; for them time was standing still. The far grumble of waters in the gorge merely accentuated the hush—did not break upon the profound silence. When a chickadee lilted near at hand the men started nervously and the girl uttered a low cry; even a bird’s note had power to trip their nervous tension.
The sound for which they were waiting came to them at last.
It was a sound with a thud in it!