Then he looked to his rifle lock, and cocked his piece.
"Unless they turn aside when they reach the timber, they will be on me in five minutes; and if they know the forest, they will not turn, that's certain; for here's the only place where you can find hard bottom to ride in and out of the old Bravo, for ten miles up and down."
He paused from his soliloquy, listened again, and then a smile crept across his intelligent face.
"Bah!" he said, "I have been disquieting myself for nothing—they are dragoon horses; I can tell their managed pace; though, what the devil brings dragoons hither, the devil himself best knows."
Then he hung up his arms as before, again removed saddle and bridle from his horse, threw down his pistols and his hatchet on the grass, and, instead of concealing himself in ambush, unarmed, except his wood-knife, stepped quite at his ease forth from the cover of his thicket, and strode boldly forward to meet the new-comers.
He had not advanced above a hundred yards from the spot where his horse was tethered and his fire burning, before he discovered the little band of travellers just entering the belt of timber, at not above a hundred yards distance from the point where he himself had ridden into it from the open prairie.
That, however, which instantly caught the eye of the rover, was the form of a female—and a female, evidently, of the superior classes, forming one of the party, which, beside herself, consisted, as he saw at half a glance, of an officer and four privates of dragoons, or mounted riflemen.
"Precious lads, truly, these," he muttered through his teeth, "to be travelling the prairies, and not see my trail at a short hundred yards. By Jove! I believe they will cross it without notice. However, I'll give them a fright anyhow—so here goes," and with the words, he clapped his hand to his mouth, and uttered a long-drawn Indian yell, which made the arches of the forest echo and re-echo its cadences, till it died quavering in the far distance.
The rifles of the little party were cocked in an instant, and two or three were instinctively cast up, and levelled in the direction whence the sound proceeded.