"Sorry I can't bury you old man," was Billy's parting
comment, as he climbed over the breastwork and melted into
the night.
Billy Byrne moved cautiously through the darkness, and he
moved not in the direction of escape and safety but directly
up the canyon in the way that the village of the Pimans lay.
Soon he heard the sound of voices and shortly after saw
the light of cook fires playing upon bronzed faces and upon
the fronts of low huts. Some women were moaning and
wailing. Billy guessed that they mourned for those whom his
bullets had found earlier in the day. In the darkness of the
night, far up among the rough, forbidding mountains it was
all very weird and uncanny.
Billy crept closer to the village. Shelter was abundant. He
saw no sign of sentry and wondered why they should be so
lax in the face of almost certain attack. Then it occurred to
him that possibly the firing he and Eddie had heard earlier in
the day far down among the foothills might have meant the
extermination of the Americans from El Orobo.
"Well, I'll be next then," mused Billy, and wormed closer to
the huts. His eyes were on the alert every instant, as were his
ears; but no sign of that which he sought rewarded his
keenest observation.
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