They had just reached this point when the young man seized his two companions and dragged them down into the shadow, where they lay silent and trembling.
It was as well that his prairie training had given Jefferson Hope the ears of a lynx.

He and his friends had hardly crouched down before the melancholy hooting of a mountain owl was heard within a few yards of them, which was immediately answered by another hoot at a small distance.

At the same moment a vague shadowy figure emerged from the gap for which they had been making, and uttered the plaintive signal cry again, on which a second man appeared out of the obscurity.
"To-morrow at midnight," said the first who appeared to be in authority.
"When the Whip-poor-Will calls three times." "It is well," returned the other.

"Shall I tell Brother Drebber ?" "Pass it on to him, and from him to the others.

Nine to seven!" "Seven to five!" repeated the other, and the two figures flitted away in different directions.