"Promise, Jimsy?"
"Promise, Skipper. 'Cross my heart!'" The old good foolish words of the old safe days, here, now, in this hideous and garish present!
With that pledge she was visibly able to give herself to a livelier hope. "But of course Yaqui Juan got through to the Grants' hacienda! Can you imagine him failing us, Jimsy?"
He shook his head. "He'll make it if any man living could." The Indian had slipped through the insurrectos in the first hour, as soon as it had been known that the wires were cut. Unless the Grants, too, were besieged, they would be able to telephone for help for El Pozo, and if they were likewise in duress, Yaqui Juan would go on to the next rancho,—on and on until he could set the wheels of rescue in motion. "I wish to God I had his job. Doing something——"
Carter came into the sala. He was terrifyingly white but with an admirable composure. "Steady, old boy," he said, putting his frail hand on Jimsy's shoulder. "Sit tight! We depend on you. And you're doing"—he looked at the decanter, as if measuring its contents with his eye—"gloriously, splendidly, old son! I know the strain you're under. You're a bigger man even than I thought you were, Jimsy."
Honor went away to sit with Mrs. King and the sick man and both boys stared unhappily after her. "If Skipper were only out of this——" Jimsy groaned.
"And whose fault is it that she's in it?" Carter snarled. Two red spots sprang into his white cheeks.
"Why—Cart'!" Jimsy backed away from him, staring.
"Whose fault is it, I say?" Carter followed him. "If she hadn't been terrified over you, if she hadn't the insane idea of duty and loyalty to you, would she have come? Would she?"