“Gonna turn me over to Reed, then, are youse?”
“I’ve no time to bother with you. He’ll know how to handle the case. Better that way, I reckon.”
Cig said nothing. For half an hour there was silence in the tent. Hollister knew that his threat was sinking in, that the kidnapper was uneasily examining the situation to find the best way out.
Daylight came, and with it signs of activity around the camp. Smoke poured out of the stovepipe projecting from the chuck tent. Men’s voices sounded. At last the beating of an iron on the triangle summoned them to breakfast.
“We’ll eat before we start,” Hollister said.
“Don’ want nothin’ to eat,” growled the prisoner.
“Different here. I do. You’ll come along, anyhow.”
The men at breakfast looked with surprise at the guest of the boss when he appeared. Hollister explained what he was doing there.
“I want to go into the tunnel and have a look around before any of you do any work,” he added. “This fellow was up to some mischief, and I want to find out what it was.”
Cig’s palate went dry. He knew better than they did in what a predicament he had put himself. If he let the thing go through as originally intended, these men would never let him reach a sheriff. If he confessed—what would they do to him?