The sleeping miners and horses were wrapped in deep shadow, but the tremulous, almost invisible veil still fluttered on the further side of the cañon. By and 289 by, the shifting moon would whisk it up again and all would be gloom as before.
The sentinel lay flat on his face and peered over the prone animals toward the faint light across the cañon, and, looking thus, he saw the outlines of a man moving among the horses and mule. A shadow could not have been more noiseless. Not the faintest rustle betrayed his footsteps.
“Just what I expected,” thought Vose; “I’ll wager Hercules against a dozen of the best horses in Sacramento that that shadder is one of them five Injins we seen stealin’ along the ledge this mornin’. All the same, I can’t imagine what the mischief he is driving at.”
The guide’s first impulse was to bring his rifle to his shoulder and let fly. The intruder was so near that it was impossible to miss him, but two causes operated to prevent this summary course: Vose wished first to learn the business of the intruder, and there was a single possibility in a hundred that he was neither an Indian nor an enemy.
The latter doubt could be solved by challenging the prowler with a threat to fire, if instant satisfaction was refused, while the firing could be made so promptly that the stranger would have no chance of whisking out of reach. Vose decided to wait until he got some idea of the other’s business.
He could still dimly discern the form, but it was so 290 obscure that had it not been moving about, he would not have been able to distinguish it or make sure it was within his field of vision.
While studying the phantom, the lower part of the veil of moonlight on the other side of the cañon was twitched up for a hundred feet. Lingering thus a minute, it was twitched still higher; then a third flirt snatched it out of the gorge. The shifting of the moon had left the cañon shrouded in darkness as before.
Nothing could have attested more strikingly the marvelous stealth of the intruder than the fact that not one of the horses was awakened by him. The approach of the great Geronimo and several of his Apaches was betrayed under somewhat similar circumstances by the neighing of a horse that they awakened, apparently when making no noise at all.
This prowler was a shadow in a world of shadows. If Hercules detected his presence, the man succeeded in soothing the fear of the hybrid.
“Halt or I’ll fire!”