The few telephones hereabouts were party lines where all
conversation could be overheard and so, for the use of highwaymen, they
were unavailable. Wicks had merely brought a key, a battery and a
ground wire with him and he had cut in on a telephone line. There
were, he remembered now, two instruments on the operator's table here.
One was the twin to the thing upon which the resourceful Wricks was
playing.
Brent and Bud Sellers had ridden with spirits rapidly sinking since
they had drawn near to that territory which lay adjacent to Wolf-Pen
Gap. The failure to reach Halloway by 'phone at Viper was a bad
augury, since it left them in the position of an army whose
intelligence bureau has collapsed.
The two horsemen had ridden through wintry forests along steep and
difficult roads where it seemed that they alone represented humanity.
Of course Alexander, herself, might be traveling as uneventfully as
themselves, but they could feel no great confidence in that hope and
now there was nothing to do but to push on to Viper, perhaps passing by
spots where they were sorely needed, as they went, and to try to find
Halloway, whose silence left them groping in the dark.
Pages:
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161