"I'd never answer to your father for letting you run any risk, Cal. You're perfectly safe here, but it might be an awful race to Saint Lucy."
Sam Herrick's idea of perfect safety was all his own, but Cal responded:
"I'd be just as safe on Dick's back. There isn't a horse in New Mexico—"
"I know," said Sam, "but a bullet or an arrer 'll out-travel any hoss living. If you could ride along under cover, to the left, 'bout half a mile, and set off behind the herd, without their sighting you—"
"Yes," said Cal, "but why can't you come along and get to the ranch with me?"
"My name's Sam Herrick, and I never went back on myself since I was born. Colonel Evans's hosses was in my keep, and nigh half on 'em's gone, and I'm bound to save the other half. I can stand off this lot of red-skins. They haven't an hour to throw away, and they know it. Mount and ride! Good-bye, Cal. You're taking all the risk there is."
Cal sprang to the saddle, shook Sam's hand, and cantered away through the trees, but he did not hear the muttered words of the man who watched his departure.
"I reckon," said Sam, "that was the only way I could have got him to try it on. He's clear grit, like his father, and he'd have stayed to fight it out in this here death-trap. I couldn't bear to have 'em get him. Besides, what I told him may be true. He may be saving the women folks at the ranch, and perhaps these chaps won't ride in. I'll give 'em a shot, now and then, till he's well away."
Sam seemed wonderfully relieved, as if a great load had been taken off his mind. It was a great thing to him to have nothing but Apaches to watch and to have no awful responsibility concerning the boyish rider of the red mustang.
If one of Sam's troubles had been in some small part removed, there was another question which from time to time came to his lips, and he now seemed almost satisfied with his own answer.