"It may be a good while before you get a chance at another."
It did not escape the notice of the lad, either, that both his friends filled to the full their old canteens, after which they repaired to one side, where they conversed for some time in low tones, and with such earnest, excited gestures, that it was plain they were in deadly earnest.
"I don't see why they keep everything from me," he muttered, as he observed this. "I think I've seen as big sights as they have for the last few days, and if there's any trouble coming, I wonder whether I haven't got to take my chance the same as them? But I'll let them alone till they get ready to tell me."
He was watching the two as they were talking to each other, when Tom beckoned to him to approach.
"There's no use of talkin'," said the hunter, in a low voice; "we're gettin' into the worst scrimmage of our lives. We're right in the middle of a dangerous tract. We've been seen by the Apaches and they're arter us."
"Why don't you wait until night and go through when they can't see you?"
The hunter shook his head at this seemingly reasonable query.
"The darkness is worse for us than it is for them. They can lay flat on the perarie and hear the sound of the hosses' feet a good deal further off than they can see 'em, and the scamps are so cunnin' they would have drawn us right into some ambush afore we'd knowed anythin' about it. No, we must try it with our eyes open and the sun shinin'."
"But what of it?" asked Ned, who did not see why their position need be looked upon as so critical. "Your mustangs are as fleet as theirs. How are they going to catch you?"
The whole difficulty was then made clear to the lad. If the Apaches were nowhere but in the rear, it would be an easy matter to give them the slip, but they were on the right and left, and in front, and signs that had been seen through the day indicated very clearly that the Indians were carrying out to the letter the plan of which the hunters had spoken, and which they dreaded so much. They had already surrounded them, the circle being quite a number of miles in diameter, and were now simply drawing in their lines.