CHAPTER VI.
APACHE CUNNING.
Enough has been told to prove the surpassing cunning of the two White Mountain Apaches who served as scouts. Once they had been among the fiercest of the followers of the fearful scourge of the border and were fully trained in his ways.
Captain Freeman was an old campaigner and had lived sufficiently long in Arizona to learn much of the methods of the hostiles, while Lieutenant Decker had made the matter his study for weeks.
And yet, despite all this and the fact that each one of the four knew that the Apache leader and his warriors were doing their utmost to lure the horsemen to their ruin, the red men came within a hair of doing so.
Only by the merest chance or accident or providence, as it may be termed, was the ingenious scheme detected in time to thwart it.
Naturally the eyes of the three horsemen in the background were fixed upon Decker and Geronimo, with glances at the warriors beyond, who were in direct range of vision, and who were watching events with apparently the same interest.
What induced Maurice Freeman to withdraw his gaze from his young friend and their enemies he could never explain, but he did so for a single instant, looking to the left of the ridge, and somewhat toward the spot where the four had been in consultation when they first discovered the Apaches. His eyes were roving over this sandy stretch when he saw something move. At first glance it was as if some burrowing animal had stirred a hummock of sand, while the animal itself was underneath and out of sight.
Wondering what it could mean, and vaguely suspecting mischief, Freeman forgot the lieutenant and Geronimo for a minute, while he watched the strange manifestation.