“I’m afraid there isn’t much show for making that test; I have been pleading with Mendez to take me in as a full partner and to allow me to be at his elbow when the first squint of the camp is obtained, but my eloquence was wasted. The fact is,” continued the young officer, becoming serious, “he is right. I don’t believe the white man lives who can steal up to an Apache camp in the day-time, or during the early part of the evening, no matter how dark, without discovery, and I needn’t tell you what that means for you and me. After midnight, when they are asleep, there might be a show, but even then Mendez must be in the advance. He expected to find you somewhere in this neighborhood, and you have been as much an object of search for the last hour or two as the hostiles themselves.”
“What was his purpose in signaling from different points, when he located me?”
“I presume to give you a good scare.”
“Well, he succeeded! I was never so rattled in all my life. But I was quite near the place where I expected to find Maroz and Ceballos.”
“That may be, but you were away off in your calculations; you made a mistake; I have done something of the kind once or twice during my checkered career.”
While the conversation continued in this vein, generally serious, but now and then lightened by the bubbling humor of the lieutenant, darkness settled about them. This was most welcome, for it brought nearer the hour for action. Between the downsetting and uprising of the sun, the all-important question must be settled as to what was to be the fate of little Fulton Freeman.
The father and the lieutenant talked several minutes longer, while their forms grew indistinct in the gloom, until a remark of the officer caused the other to turn his head toward Mendez. He had vanished.
“What’s become of him?” whispered Freeman, as if his absence indicated some new peril at hand.
“He’s gone to take a look at things; he moved away fifteen minutes ago.”