Up we sprang, into the cold, and with our blankets about our shoulders, Indian fashion, we each drank a good swig of hot tea. Then we washed our faces, and packed our blankets, and took the trail.
It was about three in the morning. The moon was halfway down the west, and the air was chill and had that peculiar feel of just before morning. Everything was ghostly, as we slipped along, but a few birds were twittering sleepily. Once a coyote crossed our path—stopped to look back at us, and trotted away again.
Gradually the east began to pale; there were fewer stars along that horizon than along the horizon where the moon was setting. The burro tracks were plain before us, in the trail that led down the valley. The trail inclined off to the left, or to the south of west; but we concluded to follow it because we could make better time and we believed that the railroad lay in that direction. The Red Fox Scouts ought to be taken as near to the railroad as possible, before we left them. They had been mighty good to us.
The moon sank, soon the sun would be up; the birds were moving as well as chirping, the east was brightening, and already the tip of Pilot Peak, far away behind us with Kit and Jed sleeping at his base, was touched with pink, when we came upon a camp.
Red Fox Scout Van Sant, who was leading, suddenly stopped short and lifted his hand in warning. Before, in a bend of the stream that we were skirting, among the pines and spruces beside it was a lean-to, with a blackened fire, and two figures rolled in blankets; and back from the stream a little way, across in an open grassy spot, was a burro. It had been grazing, but now it was eying us with head and ears up. Red Fox Scout Van had sighted the burro first and next, of course, the lean-to camp.
We stood stock-still, surveying.
"Cache!" whispered Major Henry (which means "Hide"); and we stepped softly aside into the brush. For that burro looked very much like Sally, who had been taken from us by the two recruits when they had stolen Apache also—and by the way that the figures were lying, under a lean-to, they might be the renegade recruits themselves. It was a hostile camp!
"What is it?" whispered Red Fox Scout Ward, his eyes sparkling. "Enemy?"
"I think so," murmured Major Henry.
"We can pass."