During the night, grown reckless and tired of wearing them, Black John and his companions had removed the half masks that had concealed and disfigured their countenances, and stood revealed to the prisoners in their true persons. It was an intimation to the prisoners that they could not hope to escape, and that death, or worse, awaited them.
“There’s a cañon over there,” said Black John, as he studied the mustangs and their situation. “If we could herd ’em into the mouth o’ that, and then rush ’em, and drive ’em into it, we could ketch some of ’em. And we’ve got to have some new horses.”
He knew the region, and knew that this cañon became choked and ended less than a mile back of its opening; so that, if the horses could be forced into it, they would fall easy victims to the mustangers.
Acting on Black John’s suggestions, his men spread out, several hundred yards apart, and began to move down into the valley.
Black John kept the prisoners with him, and close by him was Toby Sam.
So certain were the mustangers that the horses they saw were wild ones that the only care they used was in endeavoring to ride upon them in such a way as to throw them toward the mouth of the cañon.
But when the bandits had ridden so close that they began to wonder at the fact that the mustangs did not race away in fright, there was a sudden and startling transformation.
An Indian appeared on the back of each of the “mustangs;” an Indian striped and painted hideously, armed with feathered lance and rifle. These redskins charged the white men, with hideous yells.
Black John uttered an oath of amazement, and jerked his tired horse around. He stretched forth a hand to catch the bridle rein of the horse ridden by Lena Forest. He saw his comrades lashing their jaded animals, in efforts to escape, and saw the redskins riding upon them.
An Indian chief rode toward him, with rifle uplifted.