“Hush! Don’t speak so loud! If ’twas known we were talking here and about this, we’d be burned alive. What I was thinking of was the letting in of your friends in here. If I did, our fellows would have to git, or go under. And then you and the girls would be safe enough, so safe that if you wanted to go back on me I might whistle for my money!” “I have sworn that if you help me and the other three away, you shall have it!” “I might get killed, as I surely would, if Bill Harkness could get one sight of me, and then I’d be where money wouldn’t do me any good. I want to get out in the world and live honest once more--and I can’t do that without money.” “Why not go out, have an interview with Buffalo Bill, show him how to get in, and then stay where you will be safe?” urged Mainwaring. “I’ll be as safe here as there, if the party was in, and safer, too. It’ll never do for Bill Harkness to know, while he lives, that I’ve done this. He must be snuffed out first thing. Have you anything to write with?” “Yes--a pencil and memorandum book.” “Then write a note to Buffalo Bill, telling him what I will do and what he can do. I’ll get it to him. After that, you go and sit down where he told you to sleep--keep cool and be ready to help yourself when others are ready to help you. Here is a revolver. Keep it out of sight till you need it.” “I will,” said Mainwaring, rejoiced once more to have a weapon in his hand. “And be quiet. Don’t let Harkness, should he come down from above, see that you’ve got a bit of hope. He is keen, and if he suspects anything the whole job is gone up; for he could block the secret passage just as easy as he did the pass out there.” “Do not fear for my betrayal by look or word. I will be apparently asleep, should you return, but wide awake enough to do any duty which comes up.” “All right. Trust me now, as I trust you.” The man took the hasty note which Mainwaring wrote to Buffalo Bill, and in another moment he was out of sight. Mainwaring, placing the treasured revolver in his pocket, now went back to the place where a heap of blankets had been pointed out by Harkness as his sleeping place. Here he sat down, and drawing his hat well over his brows, watched, as calmly as he could, the faces of the girls, the comic looks of Ben, and the mingled expressions that came and went on the face of the creature Lize--for it would be an insult to the sex to call her woman. And he waited--for what, he could hardly tell. If the man, whose name, even, he did not know, for it was so unimportant he had not asked it, was faithful to his promise in a little while his friends would be there, able and willing to rescue and protect those who had become the objects of his dearest interest. He had not known May long, yet his whole heart had gone out to her, and he felt as if he would rather die with her there than live and leave her behind.