"Let me think a minute, Jeanette."
As he stood pondering, there was the glint of a light, a faint rose flicker on the wall and flooring of the cross-cut they stood in, and they saw, passing along the main drift, Seth, the Wolf, and Cayuse Braun.
The girl clutched Carney's arm and whispered, "There they go. Seth is going out with them, but he'll come back and stay in the hotel while they pull the job off."
The passing of the three men seemed to have galvanized Carney into action, fructified in his mind some plan, for he said:
"You come back to the hotel, Jeanette, and say nothing—I will see what I can do."
"And Seth—you won't——"
"Plug him for his treachery? No, because of you he's quite safe. Don't bother your pretty little head about it."
The girl's hand that had rested all this time on Carney's arm was trembling. Suddenly she said, brokenly, hesitatingly, just as a school-girl might have blundered over wording the grand passion: "Bulldog, do you know how much I like you? Have you ever thought of it at all, wondered?"
"Yes, many times, girl; how could I help it? You come pretty near to being the finest girl I ever knew."
"But we've never talked about it, have we, Bulldog?"