“Had my grub,” answered the driver gruffly. “Never did like to eat at fashionable hours.”
Darkness had enveloped mountain and canyon by the time the evening meal was finished. It was the deep, mysterious darkness of the mountains. The girls could hear the faint, musical murmur of Pinal Creek, a few hundred yards below them, music that accentuated the romance of the mysterious mountain night. Hippy Wingate, finally, having eaten all he could conveniently stow away, stood up and rapped on a tin plate for order.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, raising the plate above his head where it reflected the light from the campfire. “We are now in the former haunts of the murderous Apaches. We have fallen willing victims to the irresistible charm and the magic power of the waters of Pinal Creek.”
“Some one has been reading a guide book,” observed Anne mischievously.
“Please be silent when your superiors are speaking. Where was I?”
“Up Pinal Creek, I believe,” reminded Elfreda dryly.
“Exactly. We have penetrated far into the labyrinth of the red men of other days, the place where the savages crept with stealthy tread until their primitive language came to know it as the Apache Trail. Along this weird and amazing pathway—”
Pock!
The tin plate was whisked from Hippy’s hand and fell clattering to the ground.
Bang! came the belated report of a rifle.