"If you'll tell me how we're to connect with either!" Collins was grim.
"It's a mighty dangerous thing calling up Charliet on number one Wolf,
with the whole of La Chance crawling with Macartney and his gang,
hunting for Miss Paulette. But we can go up to the back door and try
it!"

"Oh, no," Paulette burst out wildly, "I'm afraid! I mean I know we must
find out first if Charliet's all right, but you mayn't get him--and
you'll give yourselves away!"

It was almost the first time she had spoken, and it was more to Collins
than to me, but I answered. "We'll get Charliet all right," I began--and
Collins gripped me.

"I dunno," he drawled. "Strikes me some one's going to get us--first!"

He snapped out our candle, which was senseless, since Dunn's red-hot
fire showed us up as plain as day, and all four of us stood paralyzed.
Somebody--running, slipping, with a hideous clatter of stones--was
coming down the long passage Collins called his back door.

"Macartney," said I, "and Charliet's given us away!" And with the words
in my mouth I had Paulette around the waist and shoved out of sight
behind the boulder that separated Collins's cave from his tunnel and the
pierced wall of Thompson's stope. Macartney might be a devil, but there
was no doubt the man was brave to come like that for a girl, through the
dark bowels of the earth where Charliet must have warned him Dunn and
Collins would be lurking. Only he had not got Paulette yet, and he would
find three men to face before he even saw her. I stooped over her in the
dark of Collins's tunnel, where just a knife-edge of the cave firelight
cut over the boulder's top. "Keep still, Paulette--and for any sake
don't move and kick Collins's devilish explosive he's got stuck in here
somewhere," I said, exactly as if I were steady. Which I was not,
because it was my unlooked for, heaven-sent chance to get square with
Macartney. I sprang around the boulder to do it and saw Collins strike
up the barrel of Marcia's rifle in Dunn's stretched left arm.

"Don't shoot," he yelled. "You fool, it's Charliet!"

I stood dead still. It was Charliet, but a Charliet I had never seen.
His French-Canadian face was tallow white, as he tore into the cave,
grinning like a dog with rage and excitement. He brushed Dunn and
Collins aside like flies and grabbed my arm. "Come out," he panted.
"Sacre damn, bring Mademoiselle Paulette and _come out_! It is that
Marcia! She sees you in the shack last ni