"My camp is just here," said David, with a backward jerk of his head. "There are many men there."
There was no response to this and he stepped back and said to Susan:
"Go slowly up the hill backward and keep your eyes on them. Don't look afraid."
She immediately began to retreat with slow, short steps. Leff, gasping with fear, moved with her, his speed accelerating with each moment. David a few paces in advance followed them. The Indians watched in a tranced intentness of observation. At the top of the slope the three squaws sat as motionless as carven images. The silence was profound.
Into it, dropping through it like a plummet through space, came the report of a rifle. It was distant but clear, and as if the bullet had struck a taut string and severed it, it cut the tension sharp and life flowed back. A movement, like a resumed quiver of vitality, stirred the bronze stillness of the squaws. The Indians spoke together—a low murmur. David thought he saw indecision in their colloquy, then decision.
"They're going," he heard Susan say a little hoarse.
"Oh, God, they're going!" Leff gasped, as one reprieved of the death sentence.
Suddenly they wheeled, and a rush of wild figures, galloped up the slope. The group of squaws broke and fled with them. The light struck the bare backs, and sent splinters from the gun barrels and the noise of breaking bushes was loud under the ponies' feet.
Once again on the road David and Susan stood looking at one another. Each was pale and short of breath, and it was difficult for the young girl to force her stiffened lips into a smile. The sunset struck with fierce brilliancy across the endless plain, and against it, the Indians bending low, fled in a streak of broken color. In the other direction Leff's running figure sped toward the camp. From the distance a rifle shot again sundered the quiet. After silence had reclosed over the rift a puff of smoke rose in the air. They knew now it was Daddy John, fearing they had lost the way, showing them the location of the camp.
Spontaneously, without words, they joined hands and started to where the trail of smoke still hung, dissolving to a thread. The fleeing figure of Leff brought no comments to their lips. They did not think about him, his cowardice was as unimportant to them in their mutual engrossment as his body was to the indifferent self-sufficiency of the landscape. They knew he was hastening that he might be first in the camp to tell his own story and set himself right with the others before they came. They did not care. They did not even laugh at it. They would do that later when they had returned to the plane where life had regained its familiar aspect.