CHAPTER XV
THE PLACE OF DEPARTED SPIRITS
Every man carries his skull under his face, but
God alone knows the marks on it.
Indian Proverb.
For a man moved, silent and furtive, in the tunnel between me and the stope!
At the knowledge something flared up in me that had been pretty well burnt out: and that was Hope. That any one was in the place showed Macartney had either put a guard on me—which meant Thompson's abandoned stope was not sealed so mighty securely as I thought—or else it was he himself facing me in the dark, and I might get even with him yet. I let out a string of curses at him on the chance. There was not one single thing he had done—to me, Paulette, or any one else—that I did not put a name to. And I trusted Macartney, or any man he had left in the ink-dark stope, would be fool enough to jump at me for what I said.
But no one jumped. And out of the graveyard blackness in front of me came a muffled chuckle!
It rooted me stone still, and I dare swear it would have you. For the chuckle was Dunn's: Dunn's,—who was dead and buried, and Collins with him! But suddenly I was blazing angry, for the chuckle came again, and—dead man's or not—it was mocking! I jumped to it and caught a live throat, hard. But before I could choke the breath out of it a voice that was not Dunn's shouted at me: "Hold your horses, for any sake, Stretton! It's us."
A match rasped, flared in my eyes, and I saw Dunn and Collins! Saw Dunn's stubbly fair hair, clipped close till it stood on end, as it had on the skull I'd said a prayer over and buried; saw Collins standing on the long shank bones I knew I had buried in the bush!