He told himself all this, and yet so much of the illusion remained that he fell asleep and slept soundly until the rattle of harness and the shout of horsemen told him that morning was upon them and they must be off.
He looked for his companion. He was gone. When Johnny had dressed, he found the interpreter busily assisting with the morning repast.
“Just like Cio-Cio-San,” he muttered to himself, as he dipped his hands into icy water for a morning splash.
After his escape from the two Bolsheviki in the machine shed, Pant sat by the entrance to his mine in breathless expectancy. The two Russians certainly had not seen him enter the mine, but others might have done so, and, more than that, there was grave danger that they would track him to his place of hiding.
He was not surprised when his alert ear caught a sound from without, close at hand. He only crowded a little further back into the corner, that the light from the broken-in entrance, providing it was discovered and crushed, should not fall upon him.
His heart thumped loudly. His hand gripped his automatic. He expected immediate action from without. His hopes of reaching the mother-lode of this mine vanished. He thought now only of escape.
But action was delayed. Now and then there came sounds as of footsteps and now a scratching noise reached his ear. The crust of the snow was hard. Perhaps they were attempting to tear it away with some crude implement, a stick or board.
As he listened, he heard the whine of a dog. So this was it? One of their hounds had tracked him down. They were probably afraid of him and would wait for him to come out.
“In that case,” he whispered to himself, “they will wait a long, long time.”