The roar of the flames came dreadfully near. Trees cracked, crashed and fell, sending up columns of sparks and cinders that dropped about the panting climbers. Billy began to wonder if he would hold out to the end of his task. His boy’s agility had easily outdone the man’s; but he had made the trip once before that day, had ridden from town at a killing speed; and now his endurance was almost at an end, while the Sheriff was getting his “second wind.”
They came to the crest of the gorge. “We’ll have to slow up and zig-zag down carefully or they’ll hear us an’ get away,” Billy suggested.
“They won’t be watching for visitors,” the man answered; “they’ll be hiding the plant and skinning out of here,—if they haven’t already,” he added apprehensively. He stood back to the wind and scanned the opposite bank. “There they are, two of our fellows; the chaps haven’t escaped in that direction.”
As ordered two of the posse were closing in from the west toward the rendezvous. A few more steps and the four met. Those who had been ordered to beat the mountain about the spring were waiting below; the fire had perfectly policed that territory.
As the four descended the air in the gorge became clearer. They approached the hut stealthily; and when in full view of the closed door, the Sheriff told Billy his part of the work was done, and ordered him home out of the fire.
“Oh, Mr. Sheriff, you won’t send me off now, will you, when the business is just beginning?”
In spite of the grave situation, the officer smiled at Billy’s entreating words, remembered suddenly the danger from both fire and possible lurking desperadoes. “All right. Get behind that tree, and stay out of the reach of stray shot.”
The three men lined up in front of the closed door, and one of the deputies quickly threw it open. For an instant the officers stood motionless with weapons drawn. Billy watched with fascinated eyes; the moment the door opened forgot orders, ran and crouched behind the Sheriff, peering under his uplifted arm. There in the lurid firelight that streamed through the closed window, stood the two men he had seen before, hands up, rigid, staring into pistol barrels. Floor boards were torn up; strange vessels, scales, various paraphernalia Billy could not understand, lay about them; while in a deep hole they had dug, a small, iron-bound chest was partially covered with earth. The men’s faces were smutched, streaming with perspiration, and pale with terror.
“Just in time, I reckon,” the Sheriff said facetiously; “pull up that chest and come along to our party.”
Fight gleamed in the big man’s eye, and for the breath of an instant he hesitated.