THE DECISION.

THE situation of the trapper was perilous in the extreme, for it was to be supposed that the Apaches, after the loss of one of their number, would maintain unremitting watch of the only avenue through which anyone could enter or leave the building; but he remained in a stooping posture for several minutes, passing his hands back and forth over the ground, until he had several times covered the space in front of the door.

Finally, with a muttered exclamation, he stood erect, and was ready to start toward his friends, a long way off on the elevation where he had left them hours before.

His keen ear, trained to wonderful fineness by his years of life in the wilderness, caught the footfalls of a horse, which he knew at once was ridden by one of the Apaches. Instead of moving off, or attempting to re-enter the building, he remained upright, with his back against the structure. Had there been a corresponding figure on the other side of the door, a person observing the two from a brief distance would have declared they had been carved and set there scores of years before.

The Indian rode up within sight, and halted a moment while he gazed at the front of the structure. Nothing was easier than for the trapper to tumble him from his pony, but he was too wise to summon the band by doing so. He gazed at him in turn, content to let him alone as long as he did not disturb him.

The Apache must have felt that he was in danger of drawing a shot from one of the upper windows, for he quickly wheeled his steed and rode off in the darkness.

He was hardly out of sight when Eph moved straight out from the building. If Rickard or his companion were on the watch they must have wondered at the sight, though it was explainable on the ground that the trapper was waiting a favorable opening to run the gauntlet.

Instead of crawling, the veteran broke into his loping trot, which was speedier than it appeared. The moon had risen, and though it was at his back he feared the result of the exposure to its additional light.

In no way can the success of Eph be explained other than on the ground that it was one of those pieces of extremely good fortune which sometimes attend rash enterprises on the part of a cool-headed man. He heard the sound of galloping horses, and twice caught their shadowy outlines, but he was on the alert, and, dropping to the earth, waited until the peril passed. In both cases the red men came no nearer, and he was soon advanced so far that he believed the worst was over. He straightened up once more, and, as I have shown, strode directly forward to the elevation, where all three of his friends were awaiting his coming with an anxiety that cannot be understood by one not similarly situated.

The little party listened to his story with breathless interest, Herbert being the first to speak at its conclusion.

“That’s just like Nick,” he said; “he has been waiting his chance all these days and nights, and when those men had no suspicion of what he intended, he has given them the slip.”

“I don’t have much opinion of that younker,” said the old trapper curtly.

“Why not?”

“The most foolishest thing he could do was to ride out of that building just as it ‘pears he has done. If he had stayed thar the whole thing war fixed, but now whar ar you?”

“If he has fallen into the power of Kimmaho or any of his party,” said Strubell, “it will take more than a thousand dollars to get him back.”

“What do you suppose they will demand?” inquired Herbert, his fears aroused again.

“They won’t ask anything,” said Lattin; “the Apaches don’t deal in the ransom bus’ness as much as some other folks.”

“But you talk as though he is a prisoner of theirs.”

“If he is alive, what else can he be?”

“He was well mounted and might have escaped on horseback.”

“If that had been the case,” added the elder Texan, “we couldn’t have helped knowing it.”

“But there was no noise when Eph met the Apaches except the report of his pistol.”

“We have been listening so closely here, except when I was asleep, that we noticed the tramp of the Apaches’ ponies even when they were walking; if Nick rode off at full speed we must have heard the sounds, because they would have been much louder.”

“Suppose on leaving the building, during Eph’s interview with the two men, he had ridden around to the rear and galloped several miles to the westward, would you have heard Jack’s hoofs?”

“Thar’s somethin’ in that,” remarked the trapper; “you’re all pretty sharp-eared, but that would have been too much for you to catch.”

“The supposition, however, is a very thin one,” insisted Strubell, to whom the action of Nick Ribsam was very annoying.

“I’m sorry he did it,” remarked Herbert, “but we must take things as they are, and when we meet him we’ll haul him over the coals.”

“Did Bell know anything about our being out here?” asked Strubell, turning to the trapper.

“He ‘spected you three, but he didn’t know nothin’ ‘bout me, and didn’t know when you would show yourselves. He s’posed I would meet you and give you the news, and you would hurry along. He knowed you war aimin’ for the old mission buildin’ and would be along after a while if the varmints didn’t cut you off.”

“What about our pack animals?”

“He spoke of ‘em, and said Jim-John and Brindage would ‘tend to ‘em.”

“You did so well in arranging the ransom that you ought to have included them.”

“I could have done it if you had said so, but I follered orders,” replied the trapper.

“Well,” said Lattin, “the question now is what we are to do; if Nick only knowed where we are it would be simple enough; he could give the Apaches the slip and hang ‘round till mornin’, when we could come together.”

“But it looks as if he will ride till daylight as hard as his pony can stand it—that is, if the redskins haven’t got him,” observed Strubell, “and we may hunt over the whole of New Mexico and Arizona without finding him.”

“It don’t seem to me that it will be as bad as that,” remarked Herbert, eager to gather every crumb of comfort; “for he must know he can’t find us by riding westward, but will start eastward after escaping the Apaches, so as to meet us on the way.”

“But that start that you’re talking about,” reminded Strubell, “has been made hours ago, if it was made at all, and he must now be far to the eastward.”

“He will be on the lookout for us and will strike the trail before going far.”

“I see no reason to believe that; we are not following any trail at all; if we were there would be hope, but the chance of his finding our footprints equals that of picking up a certain blade of grass on the left bank of the Brazos, when no one can direct you within a hundred miles of the spot.”

Herbert was trying to gather hope from the different views of the situation, but it looked as if his friends were determined to prevent anything of the kind.

“If you folks knew Nick Ribsam as well as I,” he sturdily insisted, “you would have a higher opinion of him than you seem to have.”

“Baker and I thought as well of him as you,” said Strubell, “but we are judging him now by what he did this evening; if he had stayed where he ought to have stayed the whole business would have been over.”

“But the Apaches are still near us,” replied Herbert.

“We could manage that; Rickard would let us inside, where we could all be together; Kimmaho might lay siege to us for days or weeks, but he couldn’t harm us, and after a time would grow tired and ride off to more inviting fields.”

“It looks to me,” observed Lattin, who seemed to dislike the general condemnation in which he had joined of a youth of whom they had all become fond, “that the most that can be said about the younker is that he has made the same mistake that one of us was likely to make. He found what he thought was a good chance to give the scamps the slip, and he done it as neatly as anything of the kind was ever done in this world.”

Eph Bozeman had held his peace for some time. Strubell now turned to him and asked his views, adding that they would be followed.

“All right,” he replied decisively; “at the first streak of daylight to-morrer we make a break for the old buildin’ yonder.”