The rest of the night the Texan put in digging a cave with a piece of slaty shale. The clay of the bank was soft and he made fair progress. The dirt he scooped out was thrown by him into the river.
Chapter XII
The Good Samaritan
A girl astride a buckskin pony rode down to the river to water her mount. She carried across the pommel of her saddle a small rifle. Hanging from the cantle strings was a wild turkey she had shot.
It was getting along toward evening and she was on her way back to Los Portales. The girl was a lover of the outdoors and she had been hunting alone. In the clear, amber light of afternoon the smoke of the town rose high into the sky, though the trading post itself could not be seen until she rounded the bend.
As her horse drank, a strange thing happened. At a point directly opposite her a bunch of tumble weeds had gathered against the bank of the shrunken stream. Something agitated them, and from among the brush the head and shoulders of a man projected.
Without an instant of delay the girl slipped from the pony and led it behind a clump of mesquite. Through this she peered intently, watching every move of the man, who had by this time come out into the open. He went down to the river, filled his hat with water, and disappeared among the tumble weeds, gathering them closely to conceal the entrance of his cave.
The young woman remounted, rode downstream an eighth of a mile, splashed through to the other side, and tied her pony to a stunted live-oak. Rifle in hand she crept cautiously along the bank and came to a halt behind a cottonwood thirty yards from the cave. Here she waited, patiently, silently, as many a time she had done while stalking the game she was used to hunting.
The minutes passed, ran into an hour. The westering sun slid down close to the horizon's edge. Still the girl held her vigil. At last the brush moved once more and the man reappeared. His glance swept the landscape, the river-bank, the opposite shore. Apparently satisfied, he came out from his hiding-place, and began to gather brush for a fire.
He was stooped, his back toward her, when the voice of the girl startled him to rigidity.