"Yes, you bet your life they do!" answered one of the younger men, lapsing into the frontiersman's language, from the force of his convictions.
"Look behind you at those trees, Jack," said Major Worth. "Can you see anything? No! And if there were an Apache behind each one of them, we should never know it."
We all turned and peered into the black darkness which surrounded us.
Another pause followed; the silence was weird—only the cracking of the fire was heard, and the mournful soughing of the wind in the pines.
Suddenly, a crash! We started to our feet and faced around.
"A dead branch," said some one.
Major Worth shrugged his shoulders, and turning to Jack, said, in a low tone, "D—— d if I don't believe I'm getting nervous," and saying "good night," he walked towards his tent.
No element of doubt pervaded my mind as to my own state. The weird feeling of being up in those remote mountain passes, with but a handful of soldiers against the wary Apaches, the mysterious look of those black tree-trunks, upon which flickered the uncertain light of the camp-fire now dying, and from behind each one of which I imagined a red devil might be at that moment taking aim with his deadly arrow, all inspired me with fear such as I had never before known.
In the cyclone which had overtaken our good ship in mid-Atlantic, where we lay tossing about at the mercy of the waves for thirty-six long hours, I had expected to yield my body to the dark and grewsome depths of the ocean. I had almost felt the cold arms of Death about me; but compared to the sickening dread of the cruel Apache, my fears then had been as naught. Facing the inevitable at sea, I had closed my eyes and said good-bye to Life. But in this mysterious darkness, every nerve, every sense, was keenly alive with terror.
Several of that small party around the camp-fire have gone from amongst us, but I venture to say that, of the few who are left, not one will deny that he shared in the vague apprehension which seized upon us.