rom where I sat on the frontage of that hill, the black, treeless mountain behind me, the hurly-burly of the scattered, out-cropping hills and tree-filled basins below me, as the sun came up in my face, my gaze was attracted to a bush upon the incline.
This bush stood apart from the others on the hill, like an advance scout; and as the sunlight streamed over the mountains I saw the branches of it agitated and a bird flew out, a bird about the size of a blackbird. I do not know its name, but it gave one of the strangest cries you ever heard—like this:
"Bob White! Bob White! Bobby White!"
And away it flew with a rising and falling motion and down into the cup below, from where its cry came up again.
It is difficult for me to tell you exactly what that bird meant to me then. My heart that was like a stone seemed cloven asunder on hearing that bird's liquid cry. That there was something eerie in the sound of it, so like human speech, did in nowise affect me. To terror, to the weird, to the unknown I now was heedless. But at that bird's cry my heart seemed just to break in sunder and I wept again, a weeping that relieved me much, so that when it was over I felt less miserable and heartsore. And I prayed a brief prayer as I had never prayed before, and was wondrously lightened after that; and turning to the horse, as men will do when alone, I spoke to it, caressing its nose and pulling its pricked ears. And then it occurred to me that if Donoghue had survived his wound, Apache Kid might still be alive. It had been for Apache, indeed, that I had entertained greater hope.
"Shall we go down to the valley and see if my friend still lives?" I said, speaking to the horse; and just then the beast flung his head up from me and his eyeballs started.
I looked in the direction of his fear—and there was Apache Kid and no other, climbing up from the direction of the bush whence the bird had flown away.
I rushed down the rise upon him with outspread arms, and at our meeting embraced him in my relief and joy, and dragged him up to my fire, and had all my story of my doings of the night, the day, and the night told him, and of Donoghue and of Canlan—a rattling volley of talk, he listening quietly all the while, and smiling a little every time I broke in upon my tale with: "You do not blame me, Apache?"
And then I asked him, all my own selfish heart being outpoured, how it was that I found him here alive.