“I have it. I will let them think we have gone on up the mountain to reconnoitre and then Muriel may try to escape. If they come out of the door I will fire, and that way no one will ever know who did it, even should some spy see them fall. And if they don’t come out we will wait till they are asleep and set fire to the shack. It will burn like tinder. In that way we shall be free. What do you think?”
“Won’t de blaze be seen?” asked Dopey.
“I don’t care if it is. It is so far away that no one could get here in time to put it out and if they do find them it will be too late to do them any good. Well, I’ll tell Muriel.”
John knocked at the flimsy door and as Muriel asked what was wanted John said that they were going up the ravine, to reconnoitre their route for the next day, and that she should keep the door shut, as they might be gone until near daylight. Muriel answered that she would do so. Then the two men drew away from the shack, but kept in view of the door with drawn pistols, but Muriel had grown so suspicious of John that she never for one moment thought of taking her helpless charge from the shelter of the shack, poor as it was. So she sat down by the bunk and held the little hand in hers until Dora, after some more words of her home and Bennie, fell asleep.
How long Muriel sat there she had no means of telling, but, as she scented treachery, she never felt more fully awake. Hours passed, and she still watched. The men outside began to think she had fallen asleep. Suddenly the watchers listened and, after a moment of suspense, they became sure they heard voices, and coming in their direction! This put a new phase on the matter. It was doubtless a searching-party and they had been tracked to this place. There was now but one thing to do, and that was to get the two women out at once and start again on their wandering. The voices approached and then receded, and finally died away in the distance.
It would be too dangerous now to set fire to the shack, and equally so to fire off a pistol, so for the time Muriel and Dora were left in peace. Muriel slept sitting by the side of the bunk with her weary head against the rough wall, after she had seen day was breaking.
In the morning she felt refreshed, and it was she who cooked the meagre allowance of bacon and bread, and made the coffee.
Four days they remained there, keeping as still as humans can, with John or Dopey all the time on the lookout. The fifth day John saw a thin spiral of smoke not more than a mile from where they were, and as he watched it he noticed that someone, an Indian probably, was making signals with it. It would rise in straight lines for a time, then suddenly cease, only to rise again in increased volume. This he knew was a signal among the Indians, but he did not know their code, although he knew enough to be sure that it was time to leave there. He determined to go South with his party, and at the first opportunity he would rid himself of Muriel first and then Dora, whom he had begun to hate on account of the trouble she made him and the fact that she had seen the murder and was now beginning to remember.
So he roughly told Muriel to prepare to start.