I stared, dazed, facing the two boys I could have sworn were dead and buried. And instead Dunn gasped wheezingly from the rock where I had let him drop, and Collins drawled as if we had met yesterday:
"We heard we were dead! But it wasn't us you buried, or any of Hutton's men either, for he'd have missed 'em. I expect you'd better put your funeral down to two stray prospectors, and let it go at that!" He looked curiously into my face. "You don't seem to have got much yourself by playing the giddy goat with Hutton!"
In the dying flicker of his match I saw his young, sneering eyes, as he called Macartney "Hutton," and realized furiously that Paulette had been right, not only that Dunn and Collins were alive, but that they were on Macartney's side. I blazed out at the two of them:
"So you've been in with Hutton all along, you young swine! I've been a blank fool; I ought to have guessed Hutton had bought you!"
Dunn let out a sharp oath, but Collins only threw down the glowing end of his match. "I wouldn't say we were on Hutton's pay roll exactly, since you seem to have found out Macartney's real name at last," he retorted scornfully. "We've been on our own, ever since we saw fit to disappear and bunk in here. Though by luck Hutton hasn't guessed it, or we wouldn't be here now!"
"I don't know that it's any too clear why you are here," I flung out hotly. "D'ye mean to say you've been living here, hiding, ever since you cleared out, and I thought the wolves ate you? That you knew all along who Macartney was—and never told me?"
"Not exactly here, if you mean Thompson's old stope you're corked up in; but of course we knew Macartney was Hutton," Collins returned categorically. "As for telling you about him—well, we weren't any too sure you weren't Hutton's man yourself—till to-night!"
"What?" said I.
But Collins apologized calmly. "We were asses, of course; but we couldn't tell we'd made a mistake. We didn't have as much fun as a bag of monkeys while we were making it, either, especially when there was that—trouble—in the assay office. We came in on the tail-end of that, only we'd no guns, and it was too late to help our poor chaps, anyway. Besides, we thought you——" but he checked abruptly. "It's too long to explain in this freezing hole. Let's get out! You're not corked up here so dead tight as Hutton-Macartney thinks," and in the dark I knew he grinned. "Only I imagine we'd better decide what we're going to do before he discovers that!"
"Do? I've got to get Paulette!" But I lurched as I turned back to the blocked tunnel entrance, and Collins caught me by the shoulder.