As I said, I am unable to analyze myself, and while a few moments ago I wished to be back at Fort Defiance, I wished nothing of the kind now that I knew the colonel and his men were seeking to take me there. I pushed myself among some bushes, determined that I would escape.
With mountain heaped on mountain and the night helping, it would seem that it was an easy enough matter for me to escape; but I was not so sure. I had followed perforce some sort of path or trace, because it was the only way in which I could go, and doubtless these men knew the way well.
The trumpets blew one more blast, and from my covert I saw the last light extinguished. Listening intently, I could hear only the sob of the wind down the great slash in the mountains, at the bottom of which I lay. I supposed that the flaming up of the lights and the blowing of the trumpets had been some sort of signal to draw the men together. I rose, but I could not see them either. I thought once of trying to climb the side of the mountain, but I feared a stumble or a slip, the noise of which would draw them to me. I pressed farther back into the bushes, but just as I made myself snug several men turned the angle of the ravine, and one of them held up a bright lantern. Its flame fell directly upon me.
"Take aim," shouted the colonel.
The six who were with him covered me with their rifles. But I had no desire to be shot.
"It's all right, colonel," I said. "I'll surrender. I'm your prisoner."
He ordered the men to lower their weapons. I walked out of the bushes toward the colonel. There was some comfort in the company of my kind, even if I was to be the prisoner and they the free men, an inequality which I thought was not deserved.
"We retook you more easily than we thought," said the colonel.