“How readily they might have ended the difficulty by putting him out of the way at once!” exclaimed the parent with a shudder.
“But for their cruelty of disposition, they would have done that. Such a course, however, must have robbed them of the exquisite happiness they are now feasting upon in imagination. So they carried the sleeping fellow, as tenderly as you could have done, to the place among the rocks, within a hundred feet of their camp. There they secured him against molestation from any prowling wild beast, believing he would sleep until morning, though it mattered little whether he did or not, since there is no way by which he could help himself.”
“If I only knew the place,” added the parent, half rising to his feet in his excitement, “I would go thither at once.”
“That is the reason Mendez gave us no hint of its location. I’m afraid, Freeman, he doesn’t rank you as being among the champion scouts of the country.”
“I never laid claim to that honor,” replied the man, with an earnestness that he would not have shown under other circumstances, “but it is so hard to wait—wait, when there’s no saying what obstacles may arise.”
“You must content your soul with patience as best you can, for Mendez is running this administration, and no one can do it better.”
The suspense was briefer than the lieutenant anticipated, though it seemed ten times its real length to the distressed parent. A gentle rustling, evidently made intentionally, caused both to turn their head.
There stood Mendez and Cemuri, and the former held in his dusky palm the dimpled hand of a little boy.
“Oh papa, is that you? Why did you leave me so long?”
“God be thanked!” was the fervent ejaculation of the delighted father, as he seized his child in his arms, pressed him to his breast and kissed him over and over again.