Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/354

 he worked. He swung about and shook his fist at his unseen enemy, irritably, impotently.

"You fool!" he cried. "You fool!—wasting powder on the people who're tryin' to save you!"

"We can’t save them!" said the woman, gray with dust, weak with hunger, sick with fear. But she worked on, mechanically, doggedly.

"We've got to!” exulted McKinnon, as he took the last box of sand. from her. "We've got to hold out until the Princeton lands her men and gets them up into the hills here! It's simply a matter of time! We can hold out here as well as in Guariqui! We're safe here! And we’ve got water!"

"But no food!" she said.

"Wait!" he cried again. "The chocolate! And the milk-tablets! It's enough! And here's brandy, see—half a cupful of brandy left!"

"But how long will that last?"

"It will last as long as we need it—until nightfall, anyway!" he declared, as he crawled back to the car and dragged the remaining rifle out from under the fallen boxes.

"But if the Princeton's men are not here by night?" she asked.

He seemed to resent her note of hopelessness.

"They will be here by night! They've got to be here! They should be at Puerto Locombia