“You’re found now,” he said, smiling into her colorless face. “How lucky I happened to be in this part of the hills. Why, you might have wandered around for hours—maybe all night.”
The events of their previous meeting came back to him vividly, almost bitterly. He felt that he must ask her certain questions, and that she must answer them. Yet, now that they had met once more, he hesitated. She was weakened by her afternoon’s adventure. It would be better, he resolved, to wait for a more desirable opportunity. Or possibly she might explain matters herself.
“Isn’t this—your ‘coyote’?” she asked suddenly, looking around.
“Yes. I was just making a final examination of the wires. It is to go off at eight o’clock.”
“To-night?”
He nodded. She shrank back, as if death itself lurked in the yawning tunnel mouth.
“Oh, there’s no danger now,” he replied, laughing. “It is only a few minutes after six. Why, I was just about to go inside to inspect the big chamber. This is my first coyote on the Los Angeles aqueduct, and I can’t afford to take any chances of a failure.”
“Aren’t you afraid?” she asked.
“Of what? The dynamite can’t go off unless the batteries are attached to the wires and the button pressed. Besides, the greater part of the stuff is buried under six feet of solid concrete.”
She sank to a pile of rocks, and pulled back her sleeve. There was blood on her white arm. “It’s been hurting dreadfully,” she said, disclosing a ragged wound, caused, she admitted, by a stumble. “That’s why I’ve been so faint.”