“Oh, all right,” said Dyke, grumblingly.
And he ceased to use the knife, and used his boot instead. The man crouched on all fours, lowered himself over the brink, hung by his hands, disappeared. Dyke stood there watching him, laughing at him, as he scrambled, fell, and rolled. About a hundred feet down he seemed to stick fast; or fear prevented him from launching himself further. Dyke went to the mule, came back with the revolver. “Go on, you clumsy fool. Go on, or I’ll shoot.” The man looked upward, but disobeyed the order. “Go on, I tell you. Very well”; and Dyke fired—not at the man but near him. Immediately he went on again, fell, rolled, scrambled, and at last was gone.
Then Dyke and Emmie dined. It was a never-to-be-forgotten meal. They ate sparingly, feeling their internal cramps and pains melted by the warmth of a divinely gentle fire, and yet almost dreading that what gave back their lives might take them away again if they were not careful. Above all else, the wine seemed to restore their forces and set the blood flowing in their veins.
Dyke, dangling his legs over the abyss, talked gaily but philosophically.
“I oughtn’t to have let him go with his life. No, I really ought to have killed him, Emmie. But, then, I knew you wouldn’t like—And I never like to myself, either—if it can be avoided. Of course, I spotted at once that so poor a specimen as that couldn’t work alone—that he was just an understrapper.” And Dyke explained and apologized for the slight untruths that he had felt compelled to tell in regard to the money. “You can’t call that lying, Emmie. I never lie. I hate lies. That was mere poker talk. If he had known I had it, and I hadn’t been nippy enough to down him first, he’d have sent a bullet through me and you too. I thought it all out while he was riding up to us—in fact, the moment I guessed he was one of the gang. If I was to spare his life, I must conceal the money, or he’d tell the others. He hasn’t anything to tell them now.” Dyke chuckled as he said this. “And it’ll take him some time to get home.”
It was past noon. Emmie mounted, and Dyke led the mule. Thus they proceeded very comfortably, encountering no difficulties, on a track that grew plainer and more easy all the way. Before long they stopped and ate again. After another two hours they took another snack. Before the sun went down, they came in sight of what Dyke had been seeking. “There,” he said, pointing downward, “do you know what that means, Emmie? It means safety. Yes, safety at last.”
It was a base camp of the engineers—not the engineers of the railway, but those employed in relaying the underground telegraph cable. One saw two rows of sheds where the men slept, and, close by, something that might almost be called a house. This, as Dyke knew, was an inn that had been established there four years ago when the cable people first appeared in the hills. All round and about these buildings were scattered heaps of material, broken implements, balks of timber.
Dyke said that on the other side of it they would find the open road, only a mile away.
“So we shan’t want the mule any more. And in any case it’s just as well to leave him here, and save ourselves the bother of answering questions. But we’ll keep this”; and he took the revolver from the holster. “It might come in useful—even yet. One never knows. Where did our friend keep his cartridges? Ah, here we are.” He refilled the empty chamber of the revolver after extracting the spent case, and, laughing, drew Emmie’s attention to the fact that the weapon was of English make and Army Service pattern. “Where did the blackguard get it, Emmie? Between you and me and the post, people ought to be a lot more careful than they are in bringing fire-arms into these South American republics. It pays, but I begin to think it isn’t really right.”