“Then let’s give them the gold and go,” suggested Mr. Whitley.
“Giving them the gold won’t help. They are furious. Whackey must have said we robbed some tomb. That’s what I make out of that fellow’s yelling.
“Then we are trapped,” Mr. Gray said.
“Looks like it,” Bill admitted. “But they can’t get up from where they are any more than we can get down—all we have to do is double-guard the cleft.”
“Until they starve us out,” said Nicky ruefully.
It seemed as though that was the intention. If the men on the road could not reach them, hunger would.
“Is there no way out?” Mr. Whitley said, at noon. He felt the responsibility he had incurred for the safety of his young charges. But no one gave him any answer.
CHAPTER XXXIV
HUAYCA PLAYS DECOY
“This is how the situation shapes up,” Bill said, finally. “We could wait until dark and then attract their attention to the place, around the pass bend, where the ladder was: get them all there, waiting for us to come down, while we sneak down the rope out of their sight on the far side and run for it.
“The objection,” he went on, “is that when they discover that we are running down the pass they can run after us and most likely they can overtake us.”