“That is rather hard to tell, until we have some more developments; but you know that the red-skins, from their earliest history, have been noted for their ingenious tricks, by which they have outwitted their foes, and you may depend upon it that this is one of their contrivances, although I must say that I do not see the necessity for any such labored attempts as that, when they have every thing their own way; and, if they would only make a united and determined charge, we should all go under to a dead certainly.”
Captain Shields, however, like many of the bravest men, was superstitious, and he was inclined to believe that there was something supernatural in the appearance of this thing, and, although he hesitated to say so, yet he looked upon it as having a most direful significance concerning himself and his friends.
Still the horse remained perfectly motionless, and the quadruped, with the blanket thrown over his back, was steadily gazing down upon them, from his perch upon the back of another quadruped.
The profound stillness that then reigned over the prairie and in Dead Man’s Gulch was rather deepened by the sound of the faintest, most distant report of a gun that seemed to have come from some point miles and miles away, in the direction of Fort Adams, proving plainly that the pursuit of the flying messenger was not yet given over.
Egbert Rodman concluded that there was a very easy and speedy way of settling the business of convincing the awed captain that there was nothing possessed by this curious animal that was not the common possession of his race. As he stood, partly turned toward him, he could not have desired a better target for a carefully aimed rifle, and he determined to tumble him from the back of the horse, and thus put a speedy end to that bugbear of the captain’s.
Without saying a word as to his intentions, he carefully thrust the muzzle of his rifle through the aperture in the canvas of the wagon, and sighted at about where he supposed the seat of life to be. He held his aim only long enough to make certain, and then pulled the trigger and looked out to see the “what is it?” pitch to the ground, and reveal his particular identity in his death-struggles before their eyes.
But what did he see? The creature, standing in precisely the same posture, and looking steadily down upon them, as unmoved as though such a thing as a gun had never been invented.
But Egbert, although very much astounded, was not yet prepared to admit that the nondescript was impregnable against a good Springfield rifle, even if those about him were under a superstitious spell.
And so, with the same steadiness of eye and nerve, he reached out and took a second rifle from beside him, and shoved this through the “port hole.”