Cal put his old silver watch back in his pocket and resumed his anxious pacing of the floor. The others, in various attitudes of alertness, were scattered about the place. Since Nat's departure they had been, as you may imagine, at a pretty tight tension. Somehow, waiting there for an attack or for rescue, was much more trying than action would have been.
"Do you guess he got through all right?" asked Joe.
"I hope so," rejoined Cal, "but it was about as risky a bit of business as a lad could undertake. I blame myself for ever letting him do it."
"If Nat had his mind made up you couldn't have stopped him," put in Joe earnestly.
"H-h-h-hark!" exclaimed Ding-dong.
Far down the canyon they could hear a sound. It grew closer. For an instant a wild hope that it was the rescue party flashed through their minds. But the next instant a voice hailed them. Evidently Col. Morello had made up his mind that a siege was too lengthy a proceeding.
"I will give you fellows in the hut one chance," he said in a loud voice, "give up that boy Nat Trevor and the sapphires and I will withdraw my men."
Cal's answer was to take careful aim, and if Joe had not hastily pulled his arm down that moment would have been Morello's last. But as Cal's white face was framed in the dark window a bullet sang by viciously and showered them with splinters.
"That's for a lesson," snarled Morello, "there are lots more where that came from."
But as he spoke there came a sudden yell of alarm from his rear.