“But he has done so many times before.”
“Some time when we hold him a prisoner (if we can hold him long enough), we’ll ask him for an explanation. It’s sufficient for us to know that we have served our friends well by keeping him in check. Every hour counts, too, in our favor. He has lost two of his best men and we are without a scratch.”
“True, for the present,” remarked Freeman, looking around in the moonlight, as if he expected to discover some of their foes trying to steal upon them.
“There’s one beauty of the situation which I don’t think you appreciate, captain.”
“What’s that?”
“Geronimo sent out his best scouts to shoot us, or at least to locate us and make it easy for the others to do the job. The chief will wait a long time before he begins to suspect what has befallen that same scout.”
“That was a marvelous exploit of Mendez,” said Freeman warmly; “I never saw a man who was his superior.”
“He has no superior.”
The subject of these compliments sat motionless on his horse, his black eyes glancing in every direction, and on the alert as he always was. He heard and understood every word, but nothing in his manner showed it.
“And yet to my mind his disposal of the scout was not the equal of his exploit in remaining in hiding so near the band that he overheard every word said by Geronimo and his men; that was a wonderful thing.”