Daylight had come suddenly, as it does in the West. The glare of the sun was rising above the trees, and over the snap of the rifles rang the songs of birds. The shack stood fully exposed in the open, while the attackers slunk in the protection of the trees.
As the Indian ran for his old place beside the grade at the end of the trestle bullets whistled about him. Peering over the edge, he saw a bohunk kneeling below, taking careful aim through the sleepers at the outstretched form of the contractor. A bullet from the Indian's rifle caught him full in the neck, and his companions hauled his limp body back under the bank. Thereafter they fired with greater circumspection and poorer aim.
Mahon set his mind seriously now to the problem that faced them. To lie there seemed fruitless; to attack supreme folly. Yet, in the way of the Police, he did not lose hope. Had there been no helpless girl to consider! And that, combined with a growing hunger, brought his mind round again to Helen. Strange how far away she seemed, how much a part of another life! And yet she was only three miles distant. She would be worrying, wondering. If the bohunks should decide to explore the village now! He fought his fears with a memory of Helen's competence to protect herself. She could outshoot any bohunk.
A volley of curses from Torrance directed Mahon's eyes to the trestle. The bohunks had attacked at last! The contractor was struggling madly with two of them! Mahon searched anxiously for the Indian, but he was far up the grade now, shooting among the trees. Torrance was fighting it out alone on that dizzy height.
As the light broke, Ignace Koppowski, too, took stock. He knew he had only to maintain the siege long enough to win; but he also realised that his followers had little stomach for a long struggle. The rising sun, too, was against every precedent as a time to attack authority. The doctrine of his kind was to stab in the dark, to hit and run—a foundation on which was based the successes of his organisation.
As he reviewed the risk of failure through nothing but the cowardice of his men, he found himself hating them with an intensity he could scarcely conceal. The transition from that to an appreciation of his own superiority was natural enough. Perhaps not so natural, a return of the twinges of conscience that had been afflicting him of late at inopportune moments. When he realised the existence of these thoughts, he read in them only weakening nerve, and to steady himself he moved about among his followers, cheering them on. But the glowering, vacillating looks he received here and there succeeded in impressing him only with the extent of his responsibility. Success in this, his grandest effort, assumed monstrous proportions. He dare not fail. Present and future demanded that.
Grimly he summoned his lieutenants to a hasty conference, not to hear quakings or objections, but to give and receive the stimulus necessary to wage the battle to the bitter end.
Werner hesitatingly advised raising the siege. In former tilts with the Mounted Police during his trapping days he had experienced their intrepidity, the hopelessness of winning against them in the long run.
"Oh?" Koppy gloomed at him beneath heavy eyebrows, giving little clue to the thoughts behind. "What next?"
What he really meant was of what profit to the leaders to yield now. Werner's keen wits read it. Volubly he suggested a rearguard of the better fighters to cover the retreat of the leaders and the rest; the besieged would not dare press them.