A Sleepless Night.
All night long Hamersley and the hunter remain upon the summit of the mound. It is a night of dread anxiety, seeming to them an age.
They think not of taking sleep—they could not. There is that in their minds that would keep them wakeful if they had not slept for a week. Time passing does not lessen their suspense. On the contrary, it grows keener, becoming an agony almost unendurable.
To escape from it, Hamersley half forms the resolution to descend the hill and endeavour to steal past the sentinels. If discovered, to attack them boldly, and attempt cutting a way through; then on into the valley, and take such chances as may turn up for the rescue of the refugees.
Putting it to his companion, the latter at once offers opposing counsel. It would be more than rashness—sheer madness. At least a dozen soldiers have been left on picket at the summit of the pass. Standing or sitting, they are scattered all over the ground. It would be impossible for anyone going down the gorge to get past them unperceived; and for two men to attack twelve, however courageous the former and cowardly the latter, the odds would be too great.
“I wouldn’t mind it for all that,” says Walt, concluding his response to the rash proposal, “ef thar war nothin’ more to be did beyont. But thar is. Even war we to cut clar through, kill every skunk o’ ’em, our work ’ud be only begun. Thar’s two score to meet us below. What ked we do wi’ ’em? No, Frank; we mout tackle these twelve wi’ some sort o’ chance, but two agin forty! It’s too ugly a odds. No doubt we ked drop a good grist o’ ’em afore goin’ under, but in the eend they’d git the better o’ us—kill us to a sartinty.”
“It’s killing me to stay here. Only to think what the ruffians may be doing at this moment! Adela—”
“Don’t gie yur mind to thinkin’ o’ things now. Keep your thoughts for what we may do arterward. Yur Adela ain’t goin’ to be ate up that quick, nor yet my Concheeter. They’ll be tuk away ’long wi’ t’others as prisoners. We kin foller, and trust to some chance o’ bein’ able to git ’em out o’ the clutches o’ the scoundrels.”
Swayed by his comrade’s counsel, somewhat tranquillised by it, Hamersley resigns himself to stay as they are. Calmer reflection convinces him there is no help for it. The alternative, for an instant entertained, would be to rush recklessly on death, going into its very jaws.
They lie along the ground listening, now and then standing up and peering through the branches at the sentries below. For a long while they hear nothing save the calls of the card-players, thickly interlarded with carajoz, chingaras, and other blasphemous expressions. But just after the hour of midnight other sounds reach their ears, which absorb all their attention, taking it away from the gamesters.