The white man and his red helpers clambered up the ore-dump, hovered together there for several minutes, all busily engaged, and then came back down the ragged little hill. And on their return Cayuse could see that they were carrying no one.
Facing about, the boy scrambled back into the gully, untied the riata that tethered the two horses to the stone, jumped into the saddle of Buffalo Bill’s mount, and galloped toward the place where he had left his pinto, with the other of the two horses in tow.
This move was characteristic of Little Cayuse. The white man and the Apaches were Buffalo Bill’s enemies, and Cayuse considered them his. It is always the proper thing to get away from an enemy everything you can. On this principle, partly, Cayuse was taking the horses. Then, again, he was looking forward to the time when Buffalo Bill and the man with him should be taken out of the old mine and need their mounts.
On reaching the defile where he had left his pinto, Cayuse pulled the pinto’s thong from the thorn-bush, changed his seat to the pony’s back, and raced up the defile, leading the animals picked up in the gully.
The boy was now in his element. He understood very well that the white man and the Apaches would miss the horses, and would imagine that they had broken away. Search would be made for the missing animals, but Cayuse would make it his business to see that the search was not successful.
If the Apaches caught him, Cayuse knew that a bullet or a knife would settle his earthly account.
But the Piute was not intending to let himself be caught. He was an Indian no less than the Apaches, and fully as able to take care of himself.
The defile the boy was following led out onto the flat desert.
Leading his horses, he circled to the south over the plain, found a place where he could descend into the gully, and was just crossing to the western wall, when a rider spurred out from behind a pile of rocks and laid his horse lengthwise across his path.
A revolver gleamed feebly in the starlight, leveled straight at the Piute’s breast.