“We’ll ride a little farther; we have plenty of time to make camp before dark.”
“Dere ain’t no sense in doing dat,” growled Jethro, who dared not leave the side of his comrade and master.
Less than fifteen minutes later the two rode round the bend in the path. Alden passed slightly ahead of his companion, but his pony had taken less than a dozen steps, when he sharply drew the rein with a startled exclamation.
He did not need to add anything by way of explanation. No more than a hundred yards distant the pony of Dick Lightfoot was standing motionless, with his head upraised and staring in alarm at the opposite bluffs. Not ten feet from his hoofs lay his master on the ground face downward. An Indian arrow projecting from his back, the feathered end pointing toward the sky, told its dreadful story.
CHAPTER XIII
“THAT’S JUST LIKE HIM!”
Alden Payne and Jethro Mix stared in silence for several seconds. Then the terrified negro gasped in a husky voice:
“Let’s run like blazes!”
The appeal roused his master. He glanced from the pony and the prostrate rider to the opposite bluffs, and at every hiding place of an enemy in his field of vision. Since the tragedy had taken place within the last few minutes, the criminal could not be far off.
There was the vast, precipitous gorge along the side of which wound the broad path that had been traversed by hundreds of men and animals, and along which the Express Riders had galloped at headlong speed times without number. There were scores of places among the towering rocks and piles of stone that would hide a host of miscreants from sight. The fatal arrow might have been launched from any one of them, and the youth could not guess which. At any rate no dusky head showed itself. The weapon that had been used gave out no sound and whether there was one assassin or a dozen must remain unknown to Alden.