“Now you know it, you jackass,” Dobbs sneered. “The cat is out of the bag. Did you think we were up here to tell one another bedtime stories, you mug?”
“We can keep them away best by holding them here,” Howard explained. “We’ll make them believe that this is the only camp we have. Besides, they won’t come across the mine anyway, even should they try to corner us from that side. The mine is not in their way, whatever they do to try to lure us out of our hole.”
“They couldn’t do anything with the mine anyhow, even if they found it.” Dobbs was gathering the ammunition out of the bags.
“No,” said Howard, “you are right, they could do nothing with it; I mean they could steal nothing. But—and this would be just too bad—they could destroy everything there. Still, come to think of it, it wouldn’t matter so much; that would save us the labor of breaking it down ourselves when we leave.”
“What about a retreat?” Lacaud suggested. “It might be better strategy not to fight at all—just to hide out and let them leave with long faces.”
“I’ve thought of that also,” Howard answered. “In the first place, there’s no other road out of here but the one on which we’d have to meet them. If it comes to a fight, we are better off here than on the road or anywhere else. Of course, we can hide somewhere near; we might even try to go across the rocks, but we might break our necks in doing that. What is worse, we could take nothing along with us. We’d lose the burros and our whole outfit. The outfit we could bury or hide somehow. But do you think they would leave us alone? They would be after us whatever trail we took. In finding trails in the Sierra we can’t beat these men. At that they are experts and we bad amateurs. Better not think of that any more.”
“You’re right, old man, as usual.” Dobbs patted him on the back.
At this moment Curtin called from his look-out: “They are at the loop now and turning into the trail up here.” He jumped down and came to the others, who were completing the last things to be done.
“You know the trail best, Curry,” Howard said. “How long do you think it will take them to get here?”
“With their tired horses it will take them two hours at least. Of course, they may be lazy and take a rest, or have difficulty making out the trail and the shortest route. So it may be as much as four hours.”
“All right.” Howard jumped into the trench. “Let’s say for sure two hours. Two hours in our favor. Let’s make the best of it. Have our eats now, so we waste no time when the dance starts.”
They sat down, built a fire, and cooked their meal. All this was done inside the trench.
Curtin did the cooking while the others were busy building stations and getting all the guns and ammunition at hand.
“If nobody objects, I’ll take command. Right by you, partners?” Howard asked.
“No objection,” was the answer.
“I’ll take the left center. You, Lacaud, take the right center. Dobbs, you take your station at the left corner, and, Curtin, you take the right corner. This corner you are to hold, Curty, is important, for here is where, through that crack in the rocks, a guy may sneak in. So you watch that side well, and Lacaud may also have a look at that flank.”
When the meal was ready, they sat down and had their final war-council while eating.
The partners were still strengthening their stations with piled-up earth, so that they could hide their heads while shooting, when the first bandits appeared on the glade.
Howard hissed to get the boys’ attention. A hiss was a very good signal, invented by the old man, as it was not different from the natural sounds of the vicinity and so was noticed only by those who were meant to hear it.
Three men were standing in the narrow opening of the bush. One of them was the man with the huge gilded palm hat. They stood for a while rather bewildered, seeing the place bare and no sign of a human being near. They called back to the other men coming into the clearing. It seemed they had left their horses on a little plateau, located some hundred and fifty feet below on the road, where there was a bit of thin pasturage. Since this last part of the trail was the hardest to make with animals, they had left the horses farther down and so reached the camp earlier than the boys had figured they would.
Two minutes later all men save two who guarded the horses were on the camp-site. What they said the boys in the trench could not hear; the distance was too great.
All the men carried guns on their hips—guns of different types and calibers. Four men carried shotguns, and two had rifles. All were in rags and had not washed or shaved for weeks; for months they had had no haircuts. Most of them wore the usual sandals; a few had boots, but ripped open and with torn soles; some had on leather pants like those worn by cowboys or cattle-farmers. All carried cheap woolen blankets over their shoulders.
Two men ventured farther into the camp-site. They noted that a tent had been pitched and a fire built not long before. Then they looked around and, on seeing no other sign, returned to the other men, now squatting on the ground near the opening.
From the spot where they were sitting, it was hard to tell that there was a ravine at the opposite part of the camp.
They were smoking and talking. The boys in the trench could see from the gestures of the men that they did not know what to make of all this or what to do. A few were heard quarreling because they had made so hard a trip without the slightest gain.
Some rose and began again to walk about the place to see if there was any trace of the hunter supposed to be there. When they returned to the main group it seemed as if they had decided to leave the camp, go down the valley, and look there for further adventures.
There was a long discussion about several points. A few men went to the middle of the camp and sat down there. Now they had to talk louder so that all the men spread over a wider space could understand what was said and give their opinions. The leader seemed to have little authority, nor was there any sort of discipline among them. Each had his own opinion, and each thought his own advice should be followed by the others.
One proposed that they use this site for headquarters from which to raid the villages in the valley.
“That would be the goddamned worst thing they could do,” said Dobbs to Howard in a hushed voice.
“You bet it would, but be quiet, so that we can listen in better.”
“I wonder,” said Curtin to Lacaud, “if it wouldn’t be best to bump them all off right now; none could escape alive. Give the word to the old man and ask him what he thinks.”
The word came back from Howard that he meant to wait; they might change their plans yet and go.
“Just look at these guys nearest here.” Curtin spoke again to Lacaud. “A fine bunch they are; they have hanging around their necks medals and pictures of the saints and the Virgin to protect them from the devil. That’s something, oh boy!”
“I told you that the papers said that the passengers had observed that all these murderers were pious Catholics.”
“Here the church has sure done a great thing,” Curtin said. “Our Methodists can’t beat that. But, man, look, what are they about now?”
Two men began to build a fire right where the partners used to have theirs, where there were still a few half-burned sticks lying about.
“There’s no doubt that they mean to stay here at least for one night,” Howard said to Dobbs.
“Well, it won’t be long now before we’ll have a real movie here.”
“They’ve got plenty of ammunition.” Lacaud pointed to some of the men who had three cartridge-belts slung about their chests, most of them well filled.
Having built the fire, one of the men went exploring, for fuel or for water or for a rabbit-hole or for wild green pepper. He went straight across the camp and right up to the trench.