Dick performed the mechs duties for the pilot in getting the engine started again, then he clambered into his old place. Sandy was already behind their new pilot.
Across to one of its longer sides he led them.In less than an hour the troop was ready, the men flannel-shirted and gauntleted, their soft felt hats pulled over their eyes, standing reins in hand, foot in stirrup, beside the fine, big horses that Crook had substituted for the broncos of the plains cavalry of former years. Down by the corrals the pack-mules were ready, too, grunting under their aparejos and packs. A thick, hot wind, fraught with sand, was beginning, presaging one of the fearful dust storms of the southwest. The air dried the very blood in the veins. The flies, sticky and insistent, clung and buzzed about the horses' eyes and nostrils. Bunches of tumbleweed and hay went whirling across the parade.
ONE:He looked about now for a sign of either party. Across the creek was some one riding slowly along the crest of a hill, seeming so small and creeping that only a very trained eye could have made it out. It was probably a hound. The hares lay low, in ca?ons and gullies and brush, as a rule. As he scanned the rest of the valley, his horse stopped short, with its fore legs planted stiffly. He looked down and saw that he was at the brink of a sheer fall of twenty feet or more, like a hole scooped in the side of the little rise he was riding over. He remembered, then, that there was a cave somewhere about. He had often heard of it, and probably it was this. He dismounted, and, tying the pony in a clump of bushes, walked down and around to investigate.
I never dreamed youd be suspicious of me! I made friends with you all and tried you out to be sure you were dependable and honest and all thatand I did bring you to this place because it is so far from telephones and railroads. But I didnt think youd get the wrong idea. I only wanted you in a place it would take time to get away from if you refused to help me.Over to the disused estate the quarry and its watchful shadow moved."Think it over, in any case," urged Forbes; "I am going in, good night.""You're right, I don't. You're as thick-headed as all the rest of them."Quickly overpowered, their captive confessed. The chef had taken the emeralds from the life preserver and frozen them in ice cubes of a deep emerald-green dye. These he easily preserved during the short times the trays were needed for other cubes, by putting them into one of the deep vegetable trays used in the refrigerating system.