"You may well look—it was one of our own men got me," he said thickly, and his curse turned my stomach; I never knew any good come of cursing the dead. I told him to shut up and tell how the thing had happened. And he grinned with sheer rage.
"It was plain damn foolery! I told you I believed I'd seen some one spying around the mine, and after I'd left you I didn't feel so sure that I'd cleared him out. I woke those fools up," his glance at the dead matched his curse at them, "and said if they heard any one prowling round my door they were to lie low in their own shack, let him get in at me here, and then bundle out and cut him off from behind. And what they did was to lose their heads. They heard some one or they didn't—I don't know. But the crazy fools piled out of their shack and ran in to me; and a man behind them—behind them, mind you—came on their heels and plugged every son of them before they were more than inside my door! It was then I yelled for you."
"D'ye mean you saw him—when he shot them?"
"I didn't see what he looked like," scornfully, "with four yelling, tumbling men between him and me. But I guess he was the man I'd been looking for. I fired and missed him, and when I lit for him over the men he'd killed he was gone. I emptied my gun into the dark on chance and yelled some more for you, and it was then I got it myself. As I turned around in the doorway, Sullivan," he pointed to the only man whose gun had been fired, "that I thought was dead, sat up and let me have it in the arm." He pointed to the ripped blue print. "You see what I'd have got if it had caught me straight! And that's all there was to it."
"D'ye mean"—I bit back Hutton's name. I had no time to hatch up a lie about him, and I was not going to drag in Paulette—"that—whoever was there, never even fired at you?"
"How do I know who he fired at?—I couldn't see inside of his head! I know he hit those chumps who could have got him if they had obeyed orders—let alone that if they'd stayed out I'd have got him clean myself when he came in. As it was, he cleared out before I could do it," said Macartney blackly, but the excitement had gone from his voice. "Call a couple of the bunk-house men to carry these four back to their shack and clean up this mess, will you? And come into my room while I tie up this cut. It's no good going after whoever was here now."
I knew that: also that I could get after him better single-handed at Skunk's Misery, where he would not expect me; or I would have been gone already. But I didn't air that to Macartney as I followed him into the partitioned-off corner he called his room. He had the last two clean-ups in his safe there, and he nodded to it as he hauled off his shirt for me to bind up his arm.
"With what's there, and what you and Wilbraham have in his office, we've too much around to be healthy," he observed succinctly, "and I guess some one's got wind of it. I don't know that it'll be any healthier for you to try running it out to Caraquet and get held up on the road! But I suppose it's got to go."
I nodded. I knew it was hand to mouth with Dudley: he had no cash to call on but the mine output, and immediate payments had to be made on the machinery we were using. But I was not excited about being held up on the Caraquet road,—after I'd once been to Skunk's Misery. I was not red-hot about hurrying there, either; I wanted to give Hutton time to get back to his lair and feel easy about pursuit after his abortive raid. "I expect we'll worry along," I said idly. "Gimme that clean rag for your arm!"
But Macartney cast down the handkerchief in his hand. "This fool thing's too short! Open that box, will you? There's a roll of bandage just inside."