“We are not going to be taken, dearest sister. Put your trust in me and watch. Here they come now. You just watch.”
Variously mounted, on horses and pack mules—whichever had come handiest in their haste—Torres, the Jefe, and their men clattered into sight. Henry drew a sight, not on them, but on the point somewhat nearer where he had made his first plant of dynamite. When he pulled trigger, the intervening distance rose up in a cloud of smoke and earth dust that obscured them. As the cloud slowly dissipated, they could be seen, half of them, animals and men, overthrown, and all of them dazed and shocked by the explosion.
Henry seized Leoncia’s hand, jerked her to her feet, and ran on side by side with her. Conveniently beyond his second planting, he drew her down beside him to rest and catch breath.
“They won’t come on so fast this time,” he hissed exultantly. “And the longer they pursue us the slower they’ll come on.”
True to his forecast, when the pursuit appeared, it moved very cautiously and very slowly.
“They ought to be killed,” Henry said. “But they have no chance, and I haven’t the heart to do it. But I’ll surely shake them up some.”
Again he fired into his planted dynamite, and again, turning his back on the confusion, he fled to his third planting.
After he had fired off the third explosion, he raced Leoncia to his tethered horse, put her in the saddle, and ran on beside her, hanging on to her stirrup.
Francis had left orders for Parker to call him at eight o’clock, and when Parker softly entered he found his master still asleep. Turning on the water in the bathroom and preparing the shaving gear, the valet re-entered the bedroom. Still moving softly about so that his master would have the advantage of the last possible second of sleep, Parker’s eyes lighted on the strange dagger that stood upright, its point pinning through a note and a photograph and into the hard wood of the dresser-top. For a long time he gazed at the strange array, then, without hesitation, carefully opened the door to Mrs. Morgan’s room and peeped in. Next, he firmly shook Francis by the shoulder.
The latter’s eyes opened, for a second betraying the incomprehension of the sleeper suddenly awakened, then lighting with recognition and memory of the waking order he had left the previous night.