The men stood tense. Archie did not relax his wound-up muscles.
'Archie!' she cried, whipping her nerves that anger might overlay compassion, 'Archie, come here. For the love of God, behave like a civilised being!'
'I told him to go,' said Archie sullenly. But he lowered his eyes from his enemy's and his fist slowly loosened.
'How can he go?'
'Why not?'
'Where can he go to? Do you mean him to starve?'
Archie shrugged his shoulders. What happened to Dick was indifferent to him, provided he went. Norah blew on the embers of her passion to kindle a blaze that should scorch pity from her heart.
'Very well. We'll go,' she said.
Archie did not answer and silence closed in on them, a sinister silence like the patch of calm in the centre of a typhoon. They waited. Dick paced about the camp. He did not try to hide the commotion of his nerves. To Norah sitting still on her box, time seemed to be measured into lengths. Something must come now ... or now ... or now.
And as she waited, she watched over the trees a falcon with the blue-grey plumage of a dove hang under the hard blue heaven motionless, save for its questing head. Then it swooped. Would Archie's completed thought deal death like that?