Bang! bang! Both barrels were discharged with a noise which seemed to have awakened all the sleeping echoes of the mountains around their camp.
Then, as the colonel hastily reloaded his piece, Perry and John Manning sprang up, each seizing his gun, and waited.
“I missed him; but, whoever it is, he won’t come prowling about again. Follow me quickly. Stoop.”
Bending down, they hurried across the few yards which intervened between them and the smouldering ashes of the fire, which, fanned now and then by the breeze sweeping along the valley, gave forth a faint phosphorescent-looking light, by which they could just make out the figures of the three Indians standing with their bows and arrows ready, as if about to shoot.
“Which of you came over to us?” said the colonel in Spanish; but there was no reply, and the speaker stamped his foot in anger. “What folly,” he cried, “not to be able to communicate with one’s guide!”
“Could it have been some one from the valley lower down?” whispered Perry, who then felt a curious startled sensation, for he recalled perfectly the words he had heard while asleep, or nearly so: “I only came to bring back your knife.”
“Then it must have been the little Indian, and he could speak English after all.”
Accusatory words rose to Perry’s lips, but he did not speak them. A strange reluctance came over him, and he shrank from getting the poor fellow into trouble, knowing, as he did, that his father would be very severe on the intruder upon their little camp. For it was a fact that the little Indian had crept up to where they slept and spoken to him. The excitement had prevented him from noticing it before, but he held in his hand the proof of the visit, tightly, nervously clutched: the knife was in his left hand, just as it had been thrust there while he slept.
“Attend here,” said the colonel. Then very sternly: “You cannot understand my words, perhaps, but you know what I mean by my actions. One of you came for some dishonest purpose to where we lay sleeping, and I wonder I did not hit whoever it was as he ran.—Give me your hand, sir,” he cried; and he seized and held Diego’s right hand for a few moments.
Then dropping it, he held out his hand to the other Indian, who eagerly placed his in the colonel’s palm.