Part 44 (1/2)

”Why don't you want to move all the posts?” he asked.

”We couldn't square that with your record,” was the candid answer.

”Moving one will swing you across instead of along the lead, and will let in our new location. I'm telling you this, because you'll probably be reasonable now that you understand the thing. Light out and don't make trouble, and you'll still hold quite a strip on the lead.”

”Give us a minute or two to think it over,” said Devine.

”In the meanwhile you'll stop just where you are,” Saunders broke in.

The man waved his hand as though he conceded that point, and Devine turned to his companion.

”I've only one excuse to make. When I staked off the claims, I was in a feverish hurry to prove the lead and get down and record,” he said.

”Now, that's not an educated man, but he's got the hang of this thing as clearly as a surveyor could have done. It's evident that the man who hired him has drilled it into him, and, what is more, has warned him that he's to make no unnecessary trouble. We're to be bounced out of rather more than half our claim, but it's to be done as quietly as possible. He explained the matter in the expectation that we'd pull out and leave the field to them.”

”You've hit it,” said Saunders. ”Don't answer. Let him speak again.

We've got to gain time.”

They waited several minutes in tense anxiety, for, after all, it was conceivable that, diplomacy failing, the jumper would adopt more forcible means. Then the man waved his hand.

”You've got to decide what you're going to do,” he said.

Devine proceeded to urge every reason he could think of, and held him in play a little longer, until finally the jumper lost his patience.

”Oh,” he said, ”you make me tired! Light out and be done with it!

We're going to pull up that post.”

Saunders thrust forward the rifle barrel so that the moonlight sparkled on it.

”Then,” he said grimly, ”come right along and s.h.i.+ft it.”

Instead of doing so, the man jumped back into the shadow, which was perhaps a very natural proceeding. Then there was oppressive silence for a few minutes. Devine, who could not hear anything, felt horribly anxious as to what their opponents might be doing. Suddenly there was a fresh rustling among the undergrowth, and Saunders thrust the rifle into his companion's hands.

”Crawling in at the back of us! Let them see you on the opposite side!” he said.

Devine wriggled through the fern, and, though he knew that this was rash, stood up where the moonlight fell upon him, with the long barrel glinting in front of him. He fancied, though he could not be certain, that he saw a shadowy figure flit back among the trees, and in any case the rustling died away again. After that he crawled back to Saunders, for, as he admitted afterward, he did not like standing on the other side of that thicket alone.

He subsequently repeated the maneuver several times, and Saunders once or twice answered the jumpers' warnings with a sardonic invitation to remove the post. Neither of them afterward was sure how long the horrible tension lasted, though they agreed that a very little more of it would probably have broken down their nerve; but at length a faint sound came out of the shadows down the valley. It rapidly grew louder, and when it resolved itself into such a smas.h.i.+ng of undergrowth as might have been made by a body of men, Saunders sprang up and waved his rifle toward where he supposed the jumpers to be.

”You'd better git,” he said. ”The boys from the settlement will head you off inside five minutes.”

There was no answer, and it appeared that the jumpers had already departed as silently as possible. A little later the men from the settlement came limping in, and the foremost of them cl.u.s.tered round Devine, who sat just outside the fern, while Saunders, whose face showed a trifle drawn in the moonlight, stood still clutching the rifle.

”What's the matter? You're not looking pert, the pair of you,” said one of them.

”Give me a cigar, if you've got one,” said Devine. ”Saunders will tell you about the thing. I've done quite enough talking for one night.”

Saunders told the story tersely, and afterward snapped the magazine of his rifle up and down with a dramatic gesture.