He turned to look across to where his friends were hidden, but they were concealed too well; nothing was visible but the great blocks of stone waiting to be levered to the edge of the shelf and sent thundering down; so turning his eyes from there, the lad gazed along the gulch again in the direction of the side gully and the open land beyond, where in all probability Griggs was now wandering in his fictitious search for game.
Two hours of patient waiting since sunrise, which had given place to painful excitement. Doubt was busy, too, in every brain, for it began to seem as if something had gone wrong, and the intense desire was attacking Chris to get down from his hiding-place and go in search of his friend.
But the orders were to lie still in hiding until the doctor gave the signal with his whistle, and knowing full well that the slightest suggestion of an ambush meant ruin to the plan, Chris forced himself to lie motionless, gazing with aching eyeballs along the gulch for the sight of the figure that as the time went on seemed as if it would never appear.
Another hour, the most hopeless of all, the most wearisome and full of pain, for with the sun getting higher the rays were reflected from the rock-face till the place grew unbearably hot, with the consequence that thirst began to parch the watcher’s throat. He was growing faint, too, for want of food, and though he had an ample supply in his wallet he did not dare to begin eating for fear that something might happen, some sudden call be made upon his energies.
“If I could only get up and move about,” thought Chris.
But he glanced round, and no one else was stirring, while his father crouched there so severe and stern of aspect that for the moment Chris forgot his own troubles and thought of those of others.
“Father’s feeling it all horribly,” thought the boy. “But poor old Griggs! We ought never to have let him go.”
What was that?
Chris strained his ears and gazed upward wildly, for high in front, nearly four hundred feet above the bottom of the gully, there was the sound of galloping horses.
The boy shook himself and stared, asking himself if he were mad or dreaming. For the rocks up there were more than perpendicular, they leaned right over, and it was absurd to think that horses were galloping there.