"Great Scot!" he ejaculated, "she's found. There she is." He raised himself a little higher to get a better view, and take in the details of the hostile camp, when suddenly a jet of smoke came out of the lava scarce a hundred yards away, the sharp snap of a rifle was heard, and a bullet clapped loudly on the rock close to his head. The Navajos were not taken by surprise.
The Navajos had spotted the Pueblo scouts; they took their appearance as a signal for fight, and now they were ready to give them or anyone with them a warm reception. This bullet was their first greeting.
The lead, splashing off the rock, spattered sharply on Stephens's cheek. Instinctively he threw up his right hand and passed it over the side of his face, but the splashes did not even draw blood, and his eye was happily uninjured. In a moment he raised his rifle to shoot back, but before he could get a bead the gleam of the rifle-barrel from which the shot had come, and the head of the Indian that had aimed it disappeared. "Dropped down to reload," said the frontiersman to himself. "He's a goodish shot, that Navajo son of a gun; that was a close call."
Lowering his head under cover, he decided to try a trick. Opening a recess in the butt of his Winchester, he drew out four little iron rods which, when screwed together, made a cleaning-rod about thirty inches in length. Then he took off his hat, put the end of the cleaning-rod inside it, and slowly hoisted it into view a yard or so away to the right of where he had looked over before. He lay on his left side and elbow, with his Winchester in his left hand, and the right arm extended raising the hat. Snap went the sharp report of a rifle again; there was a hole through the hat; dropping the rod instantly he seized his rifle with both hands and raised himself for a quick shot. But there was nothing visible worth shooting at. Once more the quick dissolving puff of smoke and the gleam of a rifle-barrel disappearing were all that he got a glimpse of. His little ruse had failed, and he was clearly discomfited, while a loud whoop of derision rang out from the rocks; it was the Navajo equivalent for "Sold again!" It was echoed from another quarter, and from another, by wild unearthly yells.
"Aha, white man," those yells seemed to say, "we've caught you now! How do you feel now? This is our country and not yours; aha! it is our home, and it shall be your grave; the vulture and the coyote know the Navajo war-whoop, and they are hurrying to pick your bones. Aha, aha!"
The solitary man felt his heartstrings quiver at the cruel sounds, but he kept his eyes glued to the place where the puffs of smoke had come from; the next time that devilish redskin put up his head to fire he would try who could draw a bead the quicker.
At this moment he was startled by a loud, coarse voice, quite close to him apparently, but coming from an unseen speaker. The words were Spanish. "Es tu, Sooshiuamo?"—"Is it you, Sooshiuamo?" The voice was the unmistakable voice of Mahletonkwa, with its thick, guttural tones.
Stephens hesitated a moment. Should he break silence and answer? He had neither fired a shot nor uttered a sound so far. But he had been discovered, for all that, and was there any further use in trying to conceal his exact position? He decided to answer.
"Si, soy," he called out in a loud voice. "Yes, that's who I am. Is that you there, Mahletonkwa?" But he did not turn his eyes in the direction of the unseen voice that had addressed him; he kept them fastened on the distant spot where he expected the rifle-barrel to reappear. Nor did he judge amiss. The hidden marksman, who thought that the American's gaze would be turned in the direction of the voice in answer to which he had spoken, put up his rifle for a third shot at him. Quick as lightning Stephens brought the Winchester to his shoulder; but even now he did not pull the trigger, for as his rifle came up the Indian's head went down again, and again those wild derisive whoops rang out, and again the voice of the unseen man, concealed so close to him, addressed him in Spanish.
"What are you doing here, Sooshiuamo? and what do you want?"