"Git 'em!" he went on, "I've got to git 'em, as the boy said; and there's no two ways about it. But how am I going to git 'em? that's the next question. If I stand straight up and try to walk right on to them, they're simply bound to have the deadwood on me. There'd be no show at all for me in that game. I've got to try and play it more their own style."
Very cautiously, foot by foot, surveying the ground on every side at each change of position, he began to move around. Dead silence reigned, broken here by no war-whoops as in the Lava Beds; the desperate red men were biding their time; hid in the rocks they knew their advantage, and reckoned at last to turn the tables on their pursuer with a vengeance.
The hot sun blazed down on him as the American patiently crept from the shelter of one rock to another, but neither sign nor sound of his enemies could he detect. Out on the plain he could see that his mare had joined the horses abandoned by the Indians, and was making friends with them. They were getting over the effects of their gallop already, and were beginning to try a nibble at the grass.
"Make friends with them as much as you like, little lady," said he, apostrophising the mare; "it's all right for you, though I can't—at least not yet. There's eleven thousand peaceable Navajos living on their reservation that I'm quite ready to be friends with, but this band of cutthroats has got to be wiped clean out. 'Hit hard when you do hit,' was old Grant's motto every time, and I reckon he knew pretty well what he was about."
On he moved again, warily searching each hole and cranny where the great rocks had fallen against each other and formed shelters.
Suddenly, as he paused a moment in his advance, listening, there came to his ears from far away a welcome, well-known sound. It was the voice of a dog giving tongue on the trail.
"Faro, by all the powers!" he cried. "Why, he must have heard the shooting at the store and come a-running to see what was up, and then not finding me there he's taken the trail of the mare."
Straining his eyes he discerned a dark spot advancing over the plain; nearer it came and nearer, and then was heard a joyful bark of recognition as the dog rushed up to the head of the grazing mare and greeted her vociferously. But soon, not finding with her the master whom he loved best of all, he left her, and questing round he came upon his trail where Stephens had dismounted to shoot, and again he eagerly gave tongue and came running towards the rocks. But at the body of White Antelope he checked.
"Now," said Stephens, standing with his back against a rock, with his rifle cocked and ready, "if those sons of guns lay themselves out to shoot him they're bound to give me a chance to spot where they are, and I'll see if I can't give them what for."
Keeping his eye on the alert for any move of theirs, he gave a sharp whistle. But the hidden red men, though they both heard him and saw the dog, would not take the risk of exposing themselves to his deadly aim, and in another minute the excited bulldog was leaping up and fawning on the master to whom he was devoted, as if to reproach him for having left his most faithful ally behind.