Time did tell, but all through the rest of the night they waited in vain for the attack. When morning finally dawned the mountains lay silent in the flood of light which poured from the rising sun. Nowhere was the enemy to be discovered.
Old Joe came up to them from the valley and declared that the men on the other side had been driven away. The fate of their comrade seemed to dishearten them, and they had crept back like snails over the rocks and vanished during the night.
It was the old Indian who set out to find what had happened among the besiegers led by Morgan. He slipped away among the rocks and brush and vanished like a phantom. He was gone an hour or more when he suddenly reappeared and beckoned to them.
“Come see,” he invited.
They knew it was safe to follow him, and they did so. Where the enemy had been ensconced they found one man, sorely wounded and in a critical condition. That was all. The others, to the last rascal of them, had vanished.
“Where have they gone, Joe?” exclaimed Frank.
“Ask him,” directed the Indian, motioning toward the wounded man. “Mebbe he tell.”
This man was questioned, and the story he told surprised and satisfied the defenders beyond measure. Disgusted over their failure to get into the valley, the ruffians had plotted among themselves. A number of them had devised a plan which to them seemed likely to be profitable. Knowing Macklyn Morgan was a very rich man, they had schemed to take him personally, carry him off, and hold him in captivity until he should pay them handsomely for his freedom. Not all the ruffians had been taken into this plot, and when the schemers started to carry Morgan off there was an outbreak and some shooting, but they got away successfully.
With Morgan and the leading spirits of the affair gone, the others quickly decided to give up the assault on the valley, and that was why they had departed in the night, leaving the wounded man behind to such mercy as Merriwell and his friends might show.
“Well, what do you think of that?” exclaimed Dick.