“That animal will be here, if he’s got forty Comanches trying to hold him.”
“I only wish I could recover mine so easily,” laughed Egbert, as the scout composedly sat down upon a large stone to await the coming of his faithful mustang, “but I am afraid Mahomet must go to the mountain in my case.”
“When I parted company with mine last night, the understanding was that he was to go off and hunt a little something to eat on his own hook, and he expected to be told when I wanted him.”
“And knowing that he will obey like an obedient child.”
“Exactly—there he comes this minute,” replied Jo, as the tread of some animal was heard but a short distance away.
“Look out, Jo, that it is nothing else,” warned Egbert, stepping back, so as to give the scout free room for whatever might come.
“I know his footstep,” was the response to this, accompanied at the same time by a precautionary movement, consisting in the guide raising the hammer of his rifle and bringing it to the front, where he could discharge it, if necessary, with the quickness of lightning, posing himself at the same time upon one foot, so as to be prepared to leap forward or backward as the case might be.
This precaution had scarcely been taken, when the mustang of Lightning Jo put in an appearance, accompanied by a Comanche Indian, who, sitting astride of the sagacious beast, was in blissful ignorance of whither he was being carried.
His position was the quiet one of ease and self-possession, showing that he had no thought of any impending danger. From this fancied security he was awakened by the sight of Lightning Jo, standing scarcely a dozen feet away, with his rifle pointed full at his breast.