Jim-Sam were striding back and forth with “ears pricked up, jest huntin’ fer trouble,” as they listened to sounds of the night rather than to what those about them were saying. Both men finally sat down in the shadows on the mountain side of the camp, but not a word did either man have to say.
“May I sit down with you boys?” asked Emma, skipping over to them. “You are expecting something, I know, and I would just love to be in on it.”
“Please, Missie, git back,” urged Sam. “Mebby nothin’ll happen. Most likely nothin’ will, but we got to listen and watch, fer—Skip!” he added in a whisper.
Jim felt his companion stiffen ever so little, and Emma, observing the expression on his face, without another word, turned and ran back to her companions. Sam had heard something, and Jim’s nod indicated that he too heard it, but neither man moved from his position, though Sam Conifer’s hand might have been seen caressing the big revolver butt that protruded from his holster.
Over yonder by the campfire there were chatter and joking and laughter, the old rancher being entertained as he had not been in many years, in fact not since he was a youngster in Illinois where he had been born and reared. Jim-Sam now heard nothing of the merriment, every faculty being bent on the slight rustling that both could hear in the bushes to the rear of them. It was not the breeze that was stirring the foliage, for there was no breeze, and they knew that it was either man or animal creeping up on them, though neither man could be certain that their own presence, there in the shadows, had been discovered.
Sam suddenly decided that the time for action was at hand. With one of those marvellously flashing movements that seemed so little a part of him, the old man jerked his weapon from its holster and fired back over his shoulder into the bushes without even looking around.
Nora uttered a scream, and the other girls sprang to their feet, while Joe Bindloss, uttering a roar, charged towards the guides, both of whom, now having risen, were shooting into the bushes. Bindloss suddenly realized that the firing was not one-sided, for he heard bullets zing past his ears. The Overland girls also at once discovered that they were under fire—revolver fire—and springing away from the campfire, they threw themselves prone on the ground.
The rancher at this juncture took a hand in the shooting. The Overland girls, despite their fright, gazed at him in admiration. Bindloss, standing in the light of the campfire, was working his revolver, firing at the flashes he saw coming from the bushes. He made a splendid mark, but nothing touched him, though twice Jim-Sam heard grunts in the bushes, that told that someone there had been hit.
“I can’t stand this!” cried Emma. “I’m going to get my rifle.”
“Lie still!” commanded Grace. “Let the men do the fighting. If they need us we shall know it, and that will be time enough.”