“We’ll let him come through the bars and set them up again,” said Percy, speaking very quickly, “and then he won’t be able to run back. As soon as the bars are up I’ll step out and order him to throw up his hands. If he makes any sign of an intention to shoot, you must shoot at him through the loophole. Will you do it?”
Percy asked this question, knowing very well by his own feelings how reluctant I should be to shoot a man.
“Yes,” I replied, after a short hesitation, “I’ll do it. As far as I see there’s nothing else for it. It is his life or ours; so, as it can’t be helped, I’ll do it.”
Seeing how hard it went with me to assent to this course, Percy magnanimously offered to change places with me, though it would have been quite as hard for him as for me; but to this I would not agree, and so we let the arrangement stand as it was, sincerely hoping that Squeaky might submit without a fight. Had we had more time we might have hit upon some other plan, but hurried as we were we had no opportunity for a full discussion of the matter.
As it was we had hardly settled upon our course of action, when round the corner there came, full into view, a man on foot, with a horse walking behind him.
It was Jack!
CHAPTER XII
A GOOD RIDDANCE
JACK, when he rode away towards Bozeman the morning before, had no sooner placed the hill between us and himself than he turned short to his left and galloped off in a new direction. Keeping in the shelter of the woods, he circled back until he arrived at a point considerably higher than the camp, whence he could look down upon us and note the direction we took when we set out for the horse-thieves’ hiding-place.
Having no pack-mules to drive, it was easy for him to keep ahead of our party, and when, about three in the afternoon, Squeaky stopped to scan the valley behind us for signs of our captain’s presence, our captain himself, half a mile to one side of the trail, was lying flat upon his stomach on the mountain-side five hundred feet above, looking down at us.