irst
a mystery to him.

It is hardly to be supposed that he intended this outcry as a hail to
the boat, which he must have seen contained no one. Its appearance would
naturally suggest to one in his situation that the occupant had been
alarmed by the signs of danger and had taken to the land. This
supposition was so natural that Hardynge would probably have got safely
by the dangerous point but for a totally unlooked-for mishap. The water,
which up to this time had been fully six feet in depth, suddenly
shallowed to less than a quarter of that, so that he struck his knees
against the bottom. The shock was very slight, and scarcely caused a
ripple; but it takes only the slightest noise to alarm an Indian,
especially when he is on the watch. That faint plash caused by the jar
of the body caught the ear of the listening, peering redskin, who
instantly slid his body over the bluff, and balancing himself for an
instant, dropped with such precision that he struck the canoe in the
very center, and preserved its gravity so well that it tipped neither to
the right nor left.

At the very moment the Apache dropped, the hunter rose to his feet,
knife in hand. The water rose scarcely to his knees, and the bottom was
hard, so that it was almost the same as if he stood upon dry land. The
warrior had not time to recover from the slight shock of his leap, when
Tom grasped him by the throat and used his weapon with such effect that
it was all over in a few seconds.

"There! I reckon you won't go into the telegraph business again very
soon!" he growled, as the inanimate body disappeared down the stream,
and he coolly re-entered the canoe, which had floated but a short
distance away.

He had scarcely done this when a new idea struck him, and, hastening
after the receding body, he carefully drew it into the boat again. Here
it was the work of but a few minutes to place it in a sitting position
in the stern in the most natural posture imaginable, so that any one
looking upon the figure would not have suspected for an instant that it
was anything but an animate being. Making sure that its pose could not
be improved, the scout then turned the boat directly away from the bank,
never changing its course until the very middle of the Gila was reached,
when he began paddling in as leisurely a manner as if no danger
threatened. It was a daring stratagem, but it is only by such means that
men are enabled to escape from peril, and although fully