This successful sadly repressed the hostilities for a space. The recovered horses were put back on the road, and the stage-drivers and express-riders resumed their interrupted activity.
"Billy," said Mr. Slade, who had taken a great fancy to Will—"Billy, this is a hard life, and you're too young to stand it. You've done good service, and in consideration of it I'll make you a supernumerary. You'll have to ride only when it's absolutely necessary."
There followed for Will a period of dolce far niente; days when he might lie on his back and watch the clouds drift across the sky; when he might have an eye to the beauty of the woodland and the sweep of the plain, without the nervous strain of studying every tree and knoll that might conceal a lurking redskin. Winter closed in, and with it came the memories of the trapping season of 1860-61, when he had laid low his first and last bear. But there were other bears to be killed—the mountains were full of them; and one bracing morning he turned his horse's head toward the hills that lay down the Horseshoe Valley. Antelope and deer fed in the valley, the sage-hen and the jack-rabbit started up under his horse's hoofs, but such small game went by unnoticed.
Two o'clock passed without a sign of bear, save some tracks in the snow. The wintry air had put a keen edge on Will's appetite, and hitching his tired horse, he shot one of the lately scorned sage-hens, and broiled it over a fire that invited a longer stay than an industrious bear-hunter could afford. But nightfall found him and his quarry still many miles asunder, and as he did not relish the prospect of a chaffing from the men at the station, he cast about for a camping-place, finding one in an open spot on the bank of a little stream. Two more sage-hens were added to the larder, and he was preparing to kindle a fire when the whinnying of a horse caught his ear. He ran to his own horse to check the certain response, resaddled him, and disposed everything for flight, should it be necessary. Then, taking his rifle, he put forth on a reconnoissance.
He shortly came upon a bunch of horses, a dozen or more, around a crook of the stream. Above them, on the farther bank, shone a light. Drawing nearer, he saw that it came from a dugout, and he heard his own language spoken. Reassured, he walked boldly up to the door and rapped.
Silence—followed by a hurried whispering, and the demand:
"Who's there?"
"Friend and white man," answered Will.
The door opened reluctantly, and an ugly-looking customer bade him enter. The invitation was not responded to with alacrity, for eight such villainous-looking faces as the dugout held it would have been hard to match. Too late to retreat, there was nothing for it but a determined front, and let wit point the way of escape. Two of the men Will recognized as discharged teamsters from Lew Simpson's train, and from his knowledge of their longstanding weakness he assumed, correctly, that he had thrust his head into a den of horsethieves.
"Who's with you?" was the first query; and this answered, with sundry other information esteemed essential, "Where's your horse?" demanded the most striking portrait in the rogues' gallery.