," muttered the ex-corporal to
himself. "What would I not give to know where his father was this
night!"

Then he turned to Jim who had somewhat sulkily drawn away to the other
end of the little parapet.

"Come back, Jim, my boy. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings," he said.
"You were perfectly right in keeping such close watch on everything and
anything the least suspicious and I was wrong if I ridiculed it. Now
we've got to divide the night between us. You lie down at once and go to
sleep. I'll keep guard till one or half past; then you relieve me until
daybreak."

And Jim, nothing loth, crept back towards the glowing coals and rolled
himself in his heavy blanket, leaving the old corporal to his solitary
reflections, and these were of a character so gloomy, so full of anxiety
and dread, that one only marvels how he was able to keep up, before Kate
and the children, the appearance of jollity and confidence that had
marked throughout this trying day his whole demeanor.

"I would give anything to know where the captain is to-night!" again he
muttered as his weary eyes gazed over the jagged hillside below him. The
Indian fires were waning again and the gleams of light on rock and tree
were growing fainter and fainter. The sounds of savage revelry, too,
were more subdued, though a hoarse, monotonous chant came up from below.
As has been said, Pike's watch-tower and fortress was fully a quarter of
a mile south of the road and about a third of a mile from the abandoned
camp, but in the absolute silence that reigned in every other quarter
the sounds from the Apache war-dance in that clear mountain air were
almost distinctly audible. The awful groans and cries of Manuelito were
still ringing in his ears, and, to himself, the old soldier confessed
that his nerve was not a little tried by the fearful sights and sounds
of the early evening. It was poor preparation for the fight that he felt
morally certain would speedily follow the rising of the morrow's sun,
but Pike had been through too many an Indian war and in too many tight
places before to "lose his grip," as he expressed it, now.

"If I only had those poor little kids safe with their father nothing
would suit me better than to be here with four or five of the old
'Troop' and let the whole of the Apache nation try to rout me out," he
said to himself. "Even as it is, I'm bloodthirsty enough now, after what
I've seen and heard to-night, to be impatient for their attack.