“They ought to have got all the stores into the cells by this time,” thought Chris. “I wish I could have helped. It seems so lazy just sitting here. But of course it makes them feel safer. But what a horrible nuisance it is for Indians to be coming to disturb us. I hope it won’t come to a fight. How horrible to have to shoot them!—Much more horrible for them to shoot us.”
Chris’s thoughts became less active, and then concentrated themselves upon the extremity of his eye scope, where he believed that he saw a mounted man standing where there was nothing before.
“Pooh! Only a rock,” muttered the boy, after a long and careful inspection. “But how fast it’s getting dark. I shan’t be able to see any enemy soon, and what am I to do then, for I shan’t be able to see anything at all? Why, nothing was said about that,” he thought, “not a word. I didn’t think about being in such a position, and I’m sure father didn’t, or he would have spoken. Now, what would he say to me, I wonder? Something about using my own discretion and acting for the best. Now, what would be the best?”
Chris set his teeth and thought hard so as to decide what would be the proper thing to do.
“Why, it’s all simple enough,” he said to himself at last. “I’m posted here to give them warning when the Indians are coming. Well, if it’s too dark for me to see them coming I can’t give any notice, and if I can’t do what I’m sent here for I should be better back at the camp.”
He looked along the gloomy gulch to see that the light was gone from the crags that shut-in the narrow way, while the bottom of the gulch was black with shadow, so dark that any one approaching would have been perfectly invisible.
“Yes,” he said to himself, “it’s of no use for me to stay here. I can’t see anything, and if the savages rode up it would be too late to try to give warning. I’ll go back.”
But he did not stir, only sat thinking in a fresh groove.
“Father won’t think me cowardly, will he?”
That was a horrible idea, one which made the boy’s cheeks burn for a minute, until his common-sense told him that no such injustice could fall to his lot.