This is not a
petty frontier business. It is something worse--a rising with a leader.
A rising with a leader is a lengthy business to tackle, and it
requires its victims. In this case we are the victims." He smiled
grimly. "We have only one thing left to do--make a dash for it while we
have the strength. You must know as well as I do that there is
scarcely anything worth calling a hope, but it's a more agreeable way
of dying than being starved out like rats and then butchered like
sheep. I know these devils." He glanced around the shadowy room with a
curious light in his eyes. "My best friend was murdered in this room,"
he added. "Personally, I prefer a fair fight in the open."
"When do you propose to make the start, Colonel?" Nicholson asked.
"Within an hour. The night favors us. The women must be kept in the
center as much as possible. I have given Geoffries special charge over
them. They will be told at the last moment. There is no use in
spoiling what little rest they have had." He drew out a pencil and
began to scribble a despatch on the back of an old letter. "I advise
you gentlemen to do likewise," he said. "Very often a piece of paper
gets through where a man can not, and it is our bounden duty to supply
the morning periodicals with as much news as possible."
For some minutes there was no sound save that of the pencils scrawling
the last messages of men with the seal of death already stamped upon
their foreheads.
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