Here are the clothes you need. I am sorry I cannot see you again, for I should like to ask you some questions in regard to a certain “affair” that happened last summer; and in which you and Lish, the Wolfer, are supposed to have been engaged. If you had anything to do with it, you will know what I mean, and you had better dig out of here without the loss of a minute’s time. Go off somewhere among white folks; begin all over again, with an earnest resolution to do better, and, as soon as you are able, make amends for what you have done. But first drop Lish, as you would drop a hot potato. You will never amount to a row of pins so long as you have anything to do with him or men like him. I have as good evidence as I want that he will rob you before the season is over, as Frank Fuller and Eben Webster robbed Leon Parker. If you had no hand in that “affair,” whatever it may be, come up to the fort as soon as you have read this note and put on these clothes, and I will do everything in my power to give you a start. In either case drop Lish. It would be better for you to work for nothing and board around, as you did in Denver, than to associate longer with him.
For prudential reasons, Oscar signed no name to the note; and, indeed, no signature was needed to tell Tom where it came from. He read it over hastily, and bending down from his saddle, he thrust it under the string with which the bundle of clothing was tied up.
“It isn’t as emphatic as I wish it was,” thought he, “but I have no time to re-write it, and I don’t know that I could make any improvements in it if I should try. I would much rather talk to him, and I wish he had——”
Just then the pony’s head came up with a jerk, and his ears were thrown back as if he were listening to some sound behind him.
He did not turn about as most horses would have done, nor did he move one of his feet an inch—not even when the clatter of hoofs on the hard path began to ring out clearly and distinctly, as it did a moment later.
Somebody was coming through the sage-brush toward the ravine—that was evident. Beyond a doubt it was the lieutenant; and here was Oscar, fairly cornered.
A person thinks rapidly when placed in a situation like this, and it did not take the boy an instant to make up his mind that everything depended on his pony.
The rock behind which he had hidden the bundle stood on the hillside, fully twenty feet from the path, and the intervening space was thickly covered with trees and bushes.
If the pony could be kept from revealing his presence, it was possible that the approaching horseman might pass on into the ravine, without suspecting that there was anyone near him.
“It’s rather a slender chance,” Oscar thought, as he swung himself from the saddle and seized his pony by the bit; “but it is the only one I have. Now, old fellow,” he added in a whisper, “just imagine that I am an Indian hiding here to escape from a white man who wants to shoot me!”