"MY GOD! THERE'S NOT A LIVING SOUL IN SIGHT."
CHAPTER IV.
ON THE WATCH.
For fully half an hour poor old Pike remained there at his post of observation, every now and then vainly scanning the plateau through his field glass. Meantime he was talking over the situation to himself. "The jig is up now. I've got to go back to camp presently. I'll have to tell them the captain is still away and that I have no idea where he has gone. I might just as well make a clean breast of it and admit that Manuelito has deserted and gone off with the mules, and that the old man (for by this half-endearing appellative the soldiers often spoke of their captain) is in pursuit. I don't suppose he found their trail until broad daylight anyhow." Then he looked back towards the nook in which his precious charges were doubtless impatiently awaiting his return. He could just see the top of the ambulance over the ledge of rock that hid it from the road. "Jim is just giving them his breakfast about this time," he went on with his self-communion. "They could not eat another mouthful if I were to go back now with my bad news. Better wait until they've had a square meal before I tell them. They can bear it better then."
Still the stout-hearted veteran would not give up hope. Again he swept the road with his glass, searching wistfully for some little dust cloud or other sign of coming horseman across the wide, open plateau, but all was silence and desolation, and, at last, feeling that he must go back to camp and get something to eat, he shouldered his rifle and went down the hill, his heart heavy as lead.
Of course it was still possible for him to hitch up the team and make a run for it, with Kate and the children, for Sunset Crossing, but he felt confident that neither Kate nor little Ned would listen to such a project if it involved leaving the captain behind. There was yet a chance of his old commander's returning in time. Although he was not to be seen anywhere over the twenty-mile stretch towards Jarvis Pass it was all the more probable that he might have found Manuelito's trail leading into the mountains north or south of the gorge in which they were now hiding. The Mexican had long been employed in the pack train and had been up through this range towards Chevelon Fork—he had heard him say so. Very probably, therefore, he had struck out for the old "short cut" back to the Verde. It was impracticable for wagons but easy enough for mules—and it lay, so Pike judged, ten or fifteen miles south of the Pass. The very thing! It would be the most natural course for him to follow since the signal fire west of Snow Lake had showed them the evening previous that the Indians were on their trail. Doubtless the captain had reasoned it out on the same line and ridden southward along the western base of the range until he had overtaken his treacherous employé. A huge shoulder of the mountain shut off the view in that direction, but the theory seemed so probable to Pike that his spirits began to rise again as he struck the road Why! It might readily be that at this moment the captain was not more than a mile or two away, and hurrying back, fast as the mules would let him, to join the loved ones whom he had left at camp.