None of us know what we can do till the test comes. Bob felt it was physically impossible for him to venture into the open again and try to reach his friends. He might at any instant run plumb into the Utes. Nevertheless he crept out from the willows into the sage desert.
The popping of the guns had begun again. The battle seemed to be close to the edge of the mesa round the bend of the river. Bob swung wide, climbing the bluff from the farther skirt of the willows. He reached the mesa.
From where he lay he could see that the whites held a ridge two hundred yards away. The Utes were apparently in the river valley.
He moved forward warily, every sense abnormally keyed to service. A clump of wild blackberries grew on the rim of the bluff. From this smoke billowed. Bullets began to zip past Bob. He legged it for the ridge, blind to everything but his desperate need to escape.
CHAPTER XXXIII
“KEEP A-COMIN’, RED HAID”
When the rangers and the militia stampeded after the Indian scout, Dud Hollister was examining the hoof of his mount. He swung instantly to the saddle and touched his pony with the spur. It shot across the mesa on the outskirts of the troop. Not impeded by riders in front, Dud reached the bluff above the river valley on the heels of the advance guard. He pulled up just in time to keep from plunging over.
The Utes, under cover of the willow saplings, were concentrating a very heavy fire on the bluff and slope below. Dud’s first thought was that the troops had been drawn into a trap. Every man who had been carried over the edge of the mesa by the impetus of the charge was already unhorsed. Several were apparently dead. One was scudding for cover.