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Besides, it couldn't be. She'll find him out. I love her so much that oh, my feelings are too big to talk about." He moved his hands eloquently. "You can't understand." "Um-m! I s'pose not," grunted Dextry, but his eyes were level and held the light of the past.
As dawn grayed the ragged eastern sky-line, Dextry and Slapjack blew in through the spindrift, bringing word from Cherry and lifting a load from Glenister's mind. "There's a game girl," said the old miner, as he wrung out his clothes. "She was half gone when she got to us, and now she's waiting for the storm to break so that she can come back." "It's clearing up to the east," Slapjack chattered.
The report, coming while he was in the act of leaping, had startled him so that he had lost his balance, slipped upon the wet boards, and fallen. His assailant was lost in the darkness before he could rise. Pursuit was out of the question, so he continued homeward, considerably shaken, and related the incident to Dextry. "You think it was some of McNamara's work, eh?"
They'll search the place," said Dextry, and the men looked grimly in each other's faces. Then in a flash Glenister stripped back the blankets and seized the "pokes," leaping into the back room. In another instant he returned with them and faced desperately the candid bareness of the little room that they lived and slept in. Nothing could be hidden; it was folly to think of it.
There came a surge and swirl through the crowd, and Dextry swooped upon them like a hawk. "Be ye hurt? Holy Mackinaw! When I see 'em blaze away I yells at ye fit to bust my throat. I shore thought you was gone.
"Steal it," he answered, at which Dextry grinned delightedly at his loose-jointed companion, and Slapjack showed his toothless gums in answer, saying: "He sure is." A few more words and Glenister, accompanied by these two, slipped out into the whirling storm, and a half-hour later the rest followed.
Thorsen grasped the dock floor, trying to climb up, but the old miner stamped on his fingers and the sailor loosened his hold with a yell, carrying the under men with him to the beach in his fall. "This way! Follow me!" shouted the mate, making up the bank for the shore end of the wharf. "You'd better pull your freight, miss," Dextry remarked; "they'll be here in a minute." "Yes, yes! Let us go!
Now she was attempting to analyze her feelings and face the future squarely, for she realized that her affairs neared a crisis, and this, too, not a month after meeting the men. She wondered if she would come to love her uncle's friend. She did not know. Of the other she was sure she never could. Busied with these reflections, she noticed the familiar figure of Dextry wandering aimlessly.
The girl shrank into her corner, gazing apprehensively at the other listener. "Well er he isn't up yet," they heard Glenister stammer; "better come around later." "Nonsense; it's time he was dressed." The master's voice was gruffly good-natured. "Hello, Dextry! Hey! Open up for inspection." He rattled the door. There was nothing to be done.
He laughed gloatingly, deep in his throat, as though the encounter were merely some rough sport. The girl shuddered, for the desperate silence of the attacking men terrified her more than a din, and yet she stayed, crouched against the wall. Dextry swung at a dim target, and, missing it, was whirled off his balance.
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