Next moment it was as if a thousand red-hot needles were being run into my stiff, trailing legs, for they caught me up by my arms and drew me like a sack to the front of the cliff.
And then I saw the whole plateau below us. Apache Kid was half-way up the rise, among the long wire-grass at the verge of the cliffs; further down, leaning upon a rock, his shoulders and head visible, was Larry Donoghue. The third man that had been spoken of I could not see and searched the hillside in vain for; but when Farrell stood upright beside me and waved his hand I saw the half-breed, Charlie, who had come after us with Mr. Pinkerton, rise behind a flat rock and lounge across it, looking up on us with his broad sombrero pushed back on his head.
Mr. Pinkerton, I supposed, had been prevailed upon to return out of our dispute, lest his life might be the forfeit for his interest in our behalf. But just as that explanation for his non-appearance had satisfied me I saw, half across the plain, something moving slowly—a pack of horses it seemed, and so clear was the air of that late afternoon that I recognised the form of the mounted man who guarded them, could almost, with a lengthy and concentrated survey, descry his great beard like a bib upon his breast.
"Well," said Farrell, "what do you want to pow-wow about? You see who we got here?"
"I see," said Apache Kid, putting a foot upon the white stone. "How are you, Francis?"
"He 's all right," said Farrell. "But he 's a kind o' prisoner o' war just now."
"Oh!" said Apache Kid. "Well, I suppose if we want to get him back we 'll have to buy him back?"
"That's what!" said Farrell, emphatically.
"Well," said Apache Kid, "we are going on,—my friends and I,—and, as we have your horses now as well as our own, we thought we might perhaps be able to trade you them back for the lad."
And here, as you will be wondering how the horses had changed hands, I must tell you what I had afterwards explained to me.