But it was evident that both he and Jim experienced a sense of positive relief.
All that morning they had toiled through the mountains; but toward the middle of the afternoon they emerged upon a high ridge; here there was good grass and a scattering growth of small timber. They crossed the ridge and descending found themselves in a fertile, well-watered valley.
“We'll camp heah,” said the Missourian, with a sweeping gesture. “Yonder, by that thicket—a stream heads there.”
As they neared the spot he had designated, Jim, who was riding a pace or two in advance and to his right, all at once swung around his long rifle. But the Missourian threw up his hand in protest.
“Don't shoot, Jim!” he called, urging his mule into a shuffling trot.
There was the sound of a stealthy, guarded movement in the tangled undergrowth they were approaching. Jim, whose sense of sight and hearing were strained to the utmost, heard a dead branch snap loudly, and then he saw a small, vague object appear on the opposite side of the thicket, and run limping away. His nerves were quite shattered by the events of the previous day, but here was something tangible, something at which to shoot, and, in his present frame of mind, the mere noise of his gun in that sombre solitude would have been a consolation; but the Missourian's ear caught the ominous click of the lock as he drew back the hammer.
“Don't shoot, you blame fool!” he called again as he crashed through the thicket in pursuit of the fleeing object. The race was a short one, and through an opening in the brush Jim saw his friend rein in his mule suddenly with a savage jerk, and swing himself from his saddle; at the same instant he heard him say:
“There, son, I ain't going to hurt you.”
An instant later Jim broke through the intervening thicket himself, and to his astonishment found the Missourian bending above the prostrate figure of a child.
“He tripped up and fell, he was powerful keen to get away,” explained the Missourian. “I might have hollered at him and saved him the tumble,” he added regretfully.