"Alone, sir?"
"Yes, alone."
"And you, sir?"
"Alone, I said," came the curt answer.
Dudley swung his animal round, touched him ever so gently with the rowel of his spur, and went off at a gallop. He would have liked to ask what his employer was going to do, and felt anxious about him and disinclined to leave him alone. But Mr. Blunt said what he meant. He was a man of few words, as a rule, and those few were very much to the point. Dudley had to be contented with that, and with an occasional glance behind him till the solitary figure was lost to sight.
"Wanted to argue!" exclaimed Mr. Blunt, when he had gone, a little smile on his lips. "That chap's a sticker. There are many men whom I have met who would have bolted from those cattle, and would have been rolled and stamped till they were as flat as sheets. It's trying work to stand and see a whole mass of heads and feet charging down, and if he had bolted I could have forgiven him. That chap's a sticker, I say, and he's come out here with the same idea as youngsters of his age and of our race have, wherever they be. They know it's right to stick to a friend, whatever the danger. That's why he doesn't fancy leaving me behind. As if I were a chicken!"
He smiled grimly as he swung his long rifle round to the front, opened the breech, and popped in a cartridge. This man knew that the time for shooting had not yet arrived, and he was not going to be hurried. He sat like a sentinel, the butt of his weapon at his hip, and neither man nor horse moved. And there Dudley and the thirty gauchos he brought back with him found their employer.
"Good!" said Mr. Blunt. "That number will scare the Indians. Now, boys," he went on, "I don't want to make bad blood, which means that I don't want to kill any of these fellows. All we want is to scare them, and to drive them off. They must have the horses rounded up by now, and we will take them over. The lesson will be a useful one. Perhaps if we are successful, they will leave us alone for a time."
At a signal from him a group of the gauchos held in their horses, while the remainder filed off in two lines, passing to left and to right of the wood. Then, having allowed them to gain some distance, Mr. Blunt walked his horse up to the ridge and clambered to the top. Ten minutes later there was a shout as one of the Indians below saw the group of gauchos, a shout which was taken up in all directions. For the Indians, some forty in number, had now come quite close to the hillock, and had drawn in the circle which they had thrown about the herd of horses. Indeed, in a little while they would have been at work with their bolas, or would have been driving the animals back to their own country. To be disturbed at such a moment must have been galling in the extreme. Cries and shouts of rage proceeded from each man, and as Dudley came to the top of the ridge, and was fully exposed, a shot rang out some fifty feet away. The bullet shaved the tip of his chin, drawing a thin line of blood, punched a neat little piece out of his left ear, and one of larger size out of the brim of his hat. Then, having done its worst, it flew on into space, buzzing and screeching as it went, for it was of native manufacture, all angled and rough.
"You might have been shaving," laughed Mr. Blunt as Dudley felt his chin with the tips of his fingers, and then touched his ear. "A miss is as good as a mile, my lad, and a shot like that will make you as steady under fire on future occasions as the oldest soldier. Hurt?"