No longer they watched the wagons in the bright moonlight; but with every confidence in their famous leader, with hands touching his garments, they waited, looking at the small chinks in the roof through which the white sky shone plainly.
Pedro was an infallible prophet when he prophesied, for this reason—he never prognosticated without mature deliberation, always ruled by existing circumstances. Men wondered and marveled, but, superficial themselves, considered it a marvelous power, when, like many other strange powers (?), it was only the legitimate offspring of two healthy parents—shrewdness and thought.
In this case he was right. Before five minutes had passed, a slight noise was heard on one side of the slanting roof, rather low down, a grating rasping noise.
“They are boring. God grant they haven’t got my butcher-knife!” excitedly whispered Duncan, in a fever. “Where do you think they are boring with their cussed knives and hatchets?”
Pedro chuckled.
“They are working too low to reach us. There is one part—a quarter—of the hill that is solid. They are boring at that place, ha! ha!”
The rasping continued, growing louder and harsher. The savages were strangely bold and reckless. No other noise was heard, only the same quick, grating sounds—grate, grate—as the metal weapons glanced from the flinty, pebbly soil.
“If they were boring on this side, now, they would be nearly through, I judge by their vigorous, rapid work,” observed Pedro. “But, as they are at work on a solid part of the hill, they will get through to us in about a week. Ha! ha! Apache!” and he laughed, tauntingly.
“I wonder where the others are,” interrogatively spoke the Canadian. “They might be in trouble for all we know.”
“Near the Dead-Man’s Gulch,” replied Pedro. “I believe they took that route in pursuit.”