"You can't get her," said he succinctly, "unless we help you! Going to trust us?"
It didn't seem to me that I had any choice; so I said yes. Then I gaped like a fool. Dunn and Collins had me by the arms and were marching me through the dark, not toward the tunnel where I'd been slung in, but back through Thompson's black, abandoned stope, as if it had been Broadway, till the side wall of it brought us up. "Over you go," said Collins gruffly. He gave me a boost against the smooth wall of the stope, and my clawing fingers caught on the edge of a sharp shelf of stone. I swung myself up on it, mechanically, and felt my feet go through the solid stope wall, into space. There was an opening in the living rock, and as Collins lit another match where he stood below me, I saw it: a practicable manhole, slanting down behind my shelf so sharply that it must have been invisible from Thompson's stope, even in candlelight. Collins and Dunn swarmed up beside me, and the next second we all three slid through the black slit behind our ledge, and out—somewhere else. Collins lit a candle-end, and I saw we were in a second tunnel, a remarkably amateur, unsafe tunnel, too, if I'd been worrying about trifles, but not Thompson's!
The thing made me start, and Collins grinned. "More convenient exit than old Thompson's, only we don't live here! If you'll come on you'll see." He and his candle disappeared round a loose looking boulder into a dark hole in the tunnel side, and his voice continued blandly as I stumbled after. "Natural cave, this tunnel was, when we found it; this second cave leading out of it; and a passage from here to—outside!" He waved his hand around as I stood dumb. "Our little country home!"
What I saw was a small round cave, the glow of a fire under a shaft that led all betraying smoke heaven knew where into the side of the hill, and two spruce beds with blankets. The permanent look of the place was the last straw on my own blind idiocy of never suspecting Macartney, and I burst out, "Why the deuce, with all you knew, couldn't you have brought Paulette here and hidden her?"
"Charliet said we should have." Collins nodded when I stared. "Oh, yes, there's more to that French Canadian than just cook! He's been in the know about us here all this time, or we'd have been in a nice hole for grub. Mind, I don't say he's brave——"
"He was under his bed when I wanted him to-night," I agreed with some bitterness.
"Was he?" Collins exclaimed electrically. "He was here, giving us the office about you! He tore down and told us you'd got Hutton, and we'd better light out and help you: but when we turned out it looked more as if Hutton had got you! When you and Miss Paulette rushed out of the kitchen door you must have run straight into an ambush of his men, and I guess one of them landed you a swipe on the head. Anyhow, Dunn and I met a procession with you frog-marched in the middle of it, that was more than we could manage without guns. So we kind of retired and let the men cork you into Thompson's stope to die. And you bet they did it. Not six of us could have got you out, ever, if we hadn't known a private way."
I cursed him. "My God, stop talking! It's not me I want to hear about. Where was Paulette? D'ye mean you followed me and left her—left a girl—to Macartney? I—I've got to go for her!"
But Collins caught me as I turned. "Macartney hadn't got her—she wasn't there! We hoofed Charliet off to find her, first thing; he'll bring her here, as soon as it's safe to make a get-away. We'd have brought her ourselves, only the show would have been spoiled if Hutton had spotted us. And we had to hustle, too, to get back here and waltz you out of Thompson's mausoleum. It'll be time enough for you to go for Miss Paulette when she doesn't turn up. You're not fit now, anyway." I felt him staring into my face. "Had anything to eat all day, except a hard ride and a fight?" he demanded irrelevantly, in a voice that sounded oddly far off.
I shook my head; and the smell of coffee smote my famished nostrils as he took a tin pot off the fire. I knew how nearly I had been done when the scalding stuff picked me up like brandy. But—"You're sure about Paulette?" I gasped. "Remember, Macartney was bound to get her!"