Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/34

 So his breath came very softly ,and as stilly as in No Man’s Land he wormed farther back among the overhanging branches.

The reason a great adventure is an adventure is because the things that happen are so very simple and so very natural. Why it is great is merely because one has not expected it, not because it could not very well have been expected had one’s wits been working. A formidable man with a big gun headed down the canyon toward Jamie, he reflected, might constitute something of an adventure. The might grew to large possibilities when the ears of Jamie, who had done quite a bit of scouting and much work on his stomach between firing lines, realized that down the mountain to the left of him there was coming a Something else that was alive, Something that was slipping, that was using the utmost caution, and yet slowly and surely was coming his way.

The adventure loomed large enough to suit Jamie’s wildest ideas of adventure when a second man, not quite so large as the first but still formidable, a darker figure since he wore a coat and hat, who carried an ugly revolver in his right hand, slowly parted the bushes and stepped into the canyon slightly to the left.

Then Jamie sat in open-mouthed wonder while these two men met because of the signal light he had seen and the big man told the other that he had been down to the road to see what the smoke and the fire meant; that there was a party of tourists, a mere mouse of a man, they could risk his being unarmed while either of them could