Before him a narrow slit opened in the wall--such a crevice as the
Major had described.

"Foy! Oh, Foy!" he called. No answer came. He raised his voice a
little louder. "Foy! Speak if you're there! It's Pringle!"

A gentle voice answered from the cleft:

"Let us hope, for your sake, that you are not mistaken about that. I
should be dreadfully vexed if you were deceiving me. The voice is the
voice of Pringle, but how about the face? I can only see your back."

"I would raise my head, so you could take a nice look by the
well-known cold gray light of the justly celebrated dawn," rejoined
Pringle, "if I wasn't reasonably sure that a rifle shot would promptly
mar the classic outlines of my face. They're all around you, Foy.
Hargis, he gave you away. Don't show a finger nail of yourself. Let me
crawl up behind that big rock ahead and then you can identify me."

"It's you, all right," said Foy when Pringle reached the rock and
straightened himself up.

"I told you so," said Pringle, peering into the shadows of the cleft.
"I can't see you. And how am I going to get to you? There are twenty
men with point-blank range. I'm muddy, scratched, bruised, tired and
hungry, sleepy and cross--and there's thirty feet in the open between
here and you, and it nearly broad daylight. If I try to cross that
I'll run twenty-five hundred pounds to the ton, pure lead. Well, we
can put up a pretty nifty fight, even so. You go back to the other
outlet of your cave and I'll stay here. I'm kinder lonesome, too....