He knew that the red men would be moving about, passing and repassing each other, and keeping up a tightening circle about the fort. They would afford the opportunity for no other white man to escape from the fort if they could help it. But they moved about as silently as the scout himself, and as the redskin is notoriously silent, Texas Jack’s ears were of little good to him in this emergency.
An Indian is not troubled by military accouterments to rattle as he walks; his moccasins are soundless, and he has schooled himself to endure all those little discomforts of body or environment that cause the white man to betray himself by either sound or movement. If a red warrior lay in wait for an enemy the flies and other insects might half eat him up without his betraying himself by a movement. He seldom has catarrhal affections of the throat, or if he does stifles the desire to cough or sneeze. He has, indeed, his whole body and mind under perfect control.
Therefore Texas Jack knew that the red men might be near—upon each side of him—in his very path, perhaps, yet they passed and repassed, silent as so many ghosts.
Texas Jack crept but a short way from the base of the hill before he lay flat down in the weeds and brush. There was a big rock on his right hand, and he believed that that obstacle, looming up as it did in the gloom, would keep anybody from walking over him.
His reason for lying there was easily understood. From the dark ground he could look upward and see any form passing between him and the lighter sky-line. He wished to get a line on the pacing to and fro of the sentinels. If there was any regularity regarding their beats, the scout might be able to time his passage so as not to be seen at all.
For if his presence was discovered, although his dress and appearance might carry him through, still there was a grave danger that they would not. There might be some password, for the redskins were shrewd, or he might run against some chief going the rounds of his men to see that all were properly placed.
Suddenly a form seemed to rise out of the ground before the advancing scout. It stood a moment directly between him and the lighter sky-line. Then it passed on—silently as the wind over the grass.
He heard a muffled grunt—a guttural Indian word—dropped by some invisible redskin in the direction the figure had disappeared. Then that, or another, sentinel returned and passed slowly across the line of Texas Jack’s vision. He was quite near the lines of sentinels, and he determined to lie there and, if possible, time their coming and going before trying himself to get through.
Once more the figure crossed the line of the scout’s vision. Texas Jack lay, scarcely moving in the grass, and with fingers on wrist counted his pulse while the Indian was in sight. In this way he learned something of the time it took for the sentinel to pace from end to end of his beat. He lay for some time and timed him back and forth to make sure that there was some regularity in the redskin’s actions.
Then, at the right moment—as the sentinel passed out of view in one direction, Texas Jack darted forward like a serpent through the tall weeds. Although he ran on his feet and touched but one hand now and then to help retain his balance, the scout’s body could never have been seen above the waving tops of the grass and weeds.