ethin'; but there's too much
confounded moonlight layin' loose for a chap to show any scientific
tricks."

The fact that a redskin had indulged in signaling suggested that there
must be some one to whom he had signaled, and the hunter devoted himself
to learning where the second Apache was located.

"As near as I kin calc'late, the chap must be on this side of the
stream, and purty close to where I'm rockin' in the cradle of the deep
this very minute."

He now moved his paddle slightly--just enough to hold the boat
motionless while he looked and listened. The stillness was profound; not
even the soft sighing of the wind reaching his ears. He had peered
around in the gloom only a few minutes when he discerned the reply to
the signal already described, and so close that he was startled.
Scarcely fifty feet below him, and on the edge of the bluff, several
yards in height, a light flashed into view. A second glance showed him
that it was a flaming torch held in the hand of an Indian, who began
whirling it around his head with a swiftness that made it seem like a
revolving wheel of fire. The rapid motion of the torch, as the reader
may infer, caused an equally rapid increase of the flame upon it, so
that it revealed the Indian himself; and the hunter, as he looked toward
it, saw the figure of the warrior standing like some pyrotechnist in the
center of his own display.

A better target could not have been asked, and Tom, quick as thought,
raised his rifle and sighted it; but with his finger upon the trigger,
he refrained, lowered the piece and shook his head, muttering as he did
so:

"He deserves it, and I'd like to give it to him, but it won't do. They'd
know what the rifle-crack meant, and I'd have a hornet's nest about my
head quick as lightnin'."

Tom was not certain of the meaning of the exhibition he had just seen,
but believed that it was intended as a mere reply to the other--the same
as if the Apache had shouted "All right!" in response to the
notification. The Indian must have circled the torch in this manner for
more than a score of times, when he threw it from his hand into the
river, where it fell with a hiss, and was instantly extinguished.

The scout was in a quandary. If he continued down stream he must pass
directly beneath the spot where his foe was standing, and the shadow was
by no means dense enough to make it possible for him to escape
observation. He was confident, however, that if he could ch