Just before reaching the spring, they passed over a spot where the moonlight struck them. There were three, dressed and accoutered like the members of the band that had wrought such sad havoc during the past day or two.
They took turns in kneeling down and quaffing from the spring, after which they rose to their feet, and stood grouped together in plain sight of the officer, who was stealthily watching them. One of them appeared to hold his peace, while the others exchanged views upon some matter that interested all.
“The next thing I must do,” thought the listener, “is to take lessons in the beautiful Apache language. I may persuade Geronimo to give me instruction, but, before he did that, he himself ought to have a few lessons in other matters.”
Nothing would have been easier than to shoot one, and perhaps all, from where the lieutenant was hiding. The distance was short, and the wretches deserved no mercy. Had Freeman been with him, it is more than probable that the two would have opened fire upon them with destructive results.
“If they’ll only be obliging enough to stand in a row,” mused the officer, struggling against the temptation, “I would let them have a broadside, but the instant I dropped one the others would be off.”
Prudence demanded that he should leave them undisturbed. The sole purpose of this remarkable expedition was to recover the lost child. To make an attack on the group, without the certainty of annihilating the whole three, would apprise the Apaches of what was on foot and inevitably defeat it. Besides, there was no telling what had become of Freeman. He, too, was likely to become involved, with disastrous consequences to himself. The occasion was unquestionably one for the exercise of self-control.
And Lieutenant Decker exercised it. He held himself motionless, with his trusty Winchester in his ready grasp, and with a strong yearning to try his skill upon the miscreants who knew no such quality as mercy.
The three warriors stood in plain view for fully ten minutes. Then they walked deliberately away, taking the opposite course from that leading to the rock where the two white men had arranged to await the return of Mendez with word of the stolen child of Freeman.
The officer kept his position for several minutes after the disappearance of the trio. There was no probability of their coming back, after quenching their thirst, but he meant to make sure they were beyond hearing before he moved.
He was uneasy over the silence of Freeman, and what he had just witnessed increased his misgivings. If these warriors made this visit, it was not unlikely that others had done the same before them. Coming upon the white man suddenly, nothing was more certain than a fatal collision, and yet it would seem that if anything of the kind had occurred, there must have been a shot, an outcry or some kind of noise which assuredly would have been heard by the lieutenant a short distance away.