“I wouldn’t be uneasy if sure he’s the only buck near, but if a second appears, and my gun is left there, they will have me foul—I’ll do it!”
All depended upon quickness and silence. In the same crouching posture, he darted across the intervening space, and was back again in a twinkling, with his gun in hand. The success of his reckless act thrilled him with pleasure.
“I haven’t been in this Apache country long,” he reflected, “but I think I have learned something. If that fellow gets the better of me, he’s smarter than I believe.”
But it was unwisdom to count on safety when peril impended. He was confronted by one of the most fearful of enemies, a member of a tribe whose exploits in cunning approach the marvelous. The most fatal thing the officer could do was to underestimate his enemy.
A dismal, disquieting question forced itself upon him: if he had effected so radical a change of base what was to prevent the Apache doing the same thing? What warrant had the white man for believing a scheme of that nature would present itself to him and not to the dusky marauder? What was to hinder his adopting the artifice?
The thought was like a wet blanket to Decker, who instead of keeping “eyes to the front,” began glancing to the right and left and behind him in quest of an insidious approach from that direction.
Nothing was seen, but the element lacking to make his situation intolerable came the next moment with the unmistakable noise—faint, but loud enough to him in his tense, nervous state to be heard plainly—made by a body gliding over the ground. Hardly had the conviction formed that it was his old enemy stealing a march upon him, when he saw his mistake. An immense rattlesnake, in its nocturnal wanderings, had been disturbed by his intrusion, and retreating a few feet, as if to gain a better point of view, threw itself into coil, reared its head and gave its warning rattle.
It was nigh enough to reach the startled man with its venomous fangs, but before it could deliver its blow, he leaped beyond reach and leveled his revolver. There was sufficient moonlight and the distance was so slight that he could have shattered its head at the first fire, but, when about to press the trigger, he restrained himself.
The shot would betray his presence to the Apache, and not only put him on his guard, but give him the chance to serve the white man as the serpent had been treated.