“Hark!”
Faintly through the still night air came the far-off exclamation:
“Hold on dar! hold on dar! or I’ll come de gold trick ober you!”
CHAPTER VI.
When Jim Tubbs issued from his subterranean domicile, he was rather too strongly inclined to act upon the report of Inwood, that is, it had been affirmed that there was no visible danger; he believed there was none, and, accordingly, he started straight for the tethering ground of the horses and mule, to make sure that they had suffered no disturbance from the marauding Mohaves.
“Dat are place whar we put ’em, is de place dat I selected, an’ dar’s no danger ob dere being troubled while dey stay dar,” he muttered, as he walked rapidly along, occasionally pausing to make sure that no one was following him.
“I always understood hosses,” he added, as he approached the vicinity of the dense undergrowth. “Dar ain’t many——”
He paused with unutterable emotion as he drew the bushes aside, and there, where they should have been, he saw them not! For a moment he was completely stupefied, and stood like one who, from the tangled web of a dream, endeavors to form the skein of coherent thought.