[CHAPTER I.]
PLOTTERS THREE.
"There's no use talkin', Siwash," and Pecos Jones leaned disgustedly back against the earth wall of the dugout; "he's got one o' these here charmed lives, that feller has, and it ain't no manner o' use tryin' to down him."
Siwash Charley was cramming tobacco into the bowl of a black pipe. He halted operations long enough to give his companion an angry look out from under his thick brows.
"Oh, ye're the limit, Pecos!" he grunted, drawing a match across the top of the table and trailing the flame over the pipe bowl. "The cub's human, an' I ain't never yet seen a human bein' that couldn't be downed—purvidin' ye went about it right."
Pecos Jones scowled discontentedly.
"Then I opine," said he, "ye ain't got sense enough to know how to go about it. That last attempt at Fort Totten wasn't nothin' more'n a flash in the pan. What did ye accomplish, huh? Tell me that. Here y' are, holed up in this dugout an' not darin' to show yer face where it'll be seen an' reckernized. The sojers want ye, an' they want ye bad. Ye come purty nigh doin' up a leftenant o' the army, an' that's why the milingtary is on yer trail, but if they knowed as much o' yer hist'ry as I do, they'd be arter ye a lot worse'n what they——"
"Stow it!" roared Siwash Charley, leaning toward his companion and bringing a fist down on the table with force enough to make the flame leap upward in the chimney of the tin lamp. "Ye'll hush arbout my past hist'ry, Jones, or thar'll be doin's between you an' me."
The place where this conversation was going forward was a hole in the hillside—an excavation consisting of a single room with a door and a window in the front wall. A shelf of earth running around three walls offered a place to sit, as well as a convenient ledge for the stowage of food supplies and cooking utensils.
The window was darkened with a blanket, so that the light would not shine through and acquaint any chance passers with the fact that the interior of the hill was occupied.