"The first thing, however, was to find some suitable place for a camp, where I could leave Tom with the horses, while I made my reconnaissance.
"It was somewhat difficult to do in the darkness, but at last I located a camp on the south side of the south ridge of the canyon. There were some great boulders with a semi-circle of trees or brush shutting in one side of the rocks.
"When I had Tom safely ensconced in our new camp, I gave him his orders and started to see what I could discover. I was armed with my revolver and a knife in my belt, as I wanted to be free to move quickly, and to fire instantly.
"I made no noise as I slipped over the ground in my moccasined feet. I could, from long experience, make myself as stealthy and invisible as any Indian and I moved noiselessly down the side of a broad valley, for such it was, rather than a canyon.
"I was approaching a high hill that rose in the center of the valley, and was making my way down a narrow hunting trail through some brush, when I became aware that there was someone coming down the trail behind me.
"I pressed close into some bushes and waited perfectly silent, as though turned to stone. In a minute I saw a dark figure coming down the trail. It was a gigantic brave and he passed so close to me that he almost stepped on my feet.
"It was fortunate he did not, for I must acknowledge a corn on one of my toes. It would have been as much as his life was worth for him to have trod on it.
"After he had gone I took up the trail again, but more cautiously. In a short time I had approached within a few hundred yards of the big hill and found myself in a regular nest of Indians. They seemed to spring up all around me. All that I could do was to lie still between two rocks.
"At any moment I might be stepped on and discovered. I could see the hill rising above me in the darkness, with its great crown of white rock. It was very quiet up there, but once I thought I heard a horse whinny.
"I was not sure that the boys were the ones that the Apaches had surrounded, as some soldiers or hunters might be the unfortunate object of all this attention from the Apaches.