Dimond obeyed. Both men peered across the hollow, but no response came from the other knoll.
“Flash it again.”
This time there came an answering flash. Carhart nodded, then took the lantern from Dimond, extinguished it, and handed it back. “Don’t light this again for any purpose,” he said. “Now see that you do exactly as I have told you. Keep your men in hand.”
“All right, sir.”
“Good night, then.”
Carhart groped his way along the hillside, slowly descending. After a time he whistled softly.
“Here—this way!” came in Byers’s voice.
They had to lead their horses nearly a mile over the plateau before they found the beaten track to Red Hills. Byers was jubilant. He was a young man who had dreamed for years of this moment. He had known not what form it would take, but that he should at some time be riding, booted and spurred, with a weight of responsibility on his shoulders, a fine atmosphere of daring about him, and the feeling within of a king’s messenger, this he had always known. And now here he was! And buoyant as an April day, the blood dancing in his veins, sitting his horse with the ease of an Indian, Byers called over to his chief: “Fine night this, Mr. Carhart!”
They were riding side by side. At his remark the chief seemed unconsciously to be pulling in. He fell behind. Byers, wondering a little, slowed down and looked around. Apparently his remark had not been heard. He called again: “Fine night, Mr. Carhart!” ... And then, in the moonlight, he caught a full view of the face of his leader. It was not the face he was accustomed to see about headquarters; he found in it no suggestion of the resourceful, energetic chief on whom he had come to rely as older men rely on blind forces. This was the face of a nervous, dispirited man of the name of Carhart, a man riding a small horse, who, after accomplishing relentlessly all that man could accomplish, had reached the point where he could do nothing further, where he must lay down his hand and accept the inevitable, whether for better or for worse. Byers could not, perhaps, understand what this endless night meant to Paul Carhart, but the sight of that face sobered him. And it was a very grave young man who turned in his saddle and peered out ahead and let his eyes rove along the dreary, moonlit trail.