“I’m taking that guess for gospel,” affirmed the chief gunman, wiping spray from his face. “Mr. Craig, you can’t expect us to hang on here, facing a thing like what’s coming!”
“Shoot him!” gasped the Comas director, but he was revolving on unsteady feet and the aimlessness of his gaze revealed that he had no definite idea of procedure; his incertitude wrecked all the courage of his supporters.
“It can’t be done, sir. Not in this fog! We’d better get ashore——”
“And let him wreck this dam?”
“If he’s going to wreck it, we’d better be off it.”
In his fear Craig became insulting, and that attitude ended his control of the situation. “You’re hired with money, you cowards! Now earn it!”
“This is where your money can’t buy something for you, Mr. Craig,” the captain of the gunmen declared, and then he led the retreat of his squad across Skulltree dam and into the woods on the far shore from the portentous, invisible peril.
And with dire extremity clearing for the moment his clouded vision, enabling him to look squarely at the matter of service and loyalty as he was able to command it, Craig knew that when his money failed him in the north country he had no other resource. He had blinked that fact in the past, having found that in ordinary affairs his dollars were dominant; but this extraordinary event was knocking out from under him all the props of confidence; he felt bitterly alone all of a sudden.
“We’ll have to vamoose off this dam,” declared the deputy sheriff.
“You’ve got your duty as an officer of the law,” shouted Craig, desperately feeling that in the case of this man, at least, he was making an appeal to something that was not covered by a money consideration.