A False Alarm.
The significant shout at once put a period to my reflections.
Believing the savages to be in sight, I spurred towards the front. The horsemen had drawn bridle and halted. A few, who had been straggling from the path, hurried up and ranged themselves close to the main body, as if for protection. A few others, who had been riding carelessly in the advance, were seen galloping back. It was from these last the cry of “Indyens” had come, and several of them still continued to repeat it.
“Indyuns?” cried Hickman, interrogatively, and with an air of incredulity. “Whar did ye see them?”
“Yonder,” responded one of the retreating horsemen—“in yon clump o’ live-oaks. It’s full o’ them.”
“I’ll be dog-goned if I believe it,” rejoined the old hunter, with a contemptuous toss of the head. “I’ll lay a plug o’ Jeemes’s River, it war stumps yez seed! Indyuns don’t show ’emselves in timmer like this hyar—specially to sech verdunts as you. Ye’ll hear ’em afore you see ’em, I kalklate.”
“But we did hear them,” replied one, “we heard them calling out to one another.”
“Bah!” exclaimed the hunter; “y’ull hear ’em different from that, I guess, when you gets near enough. It’ll be the spang o’ thar rifles y’ull hear fust thing. Dog-gone the Indyun’s thar. Twar a coon or a cat-bird ye’ve heern a screamin’! I know’d ye’d make a scamper the fust thing as flittered afore ye.”
“Stay whar yez are now,” he added in a tone of authority, “jest stay whar yez are a bit.”
So saying, he slipped down from his saddle, and commenced hitching his bridle to a branch.