on't you?"

"I don't," said Joses; "but the Beaver does, and I give in. He knows
best about it, having been so much more among the Injun than I have, and
being Injun himself. I daresay they will come, but they won't stampede
our horses, I'm thinking, and they won't get the cattle. They may get
to know where the ways are into the corral and the horse 'closure, and
perhaps find out the path up to the castle, as the master calls it."

"But they couldn't unless they came close up, Joses."

"Well, what's to hinder 'em from coming close up? They'll crawl through
the grass, and from stone to stone in the dark there, and who's to see
'em? My eyes are sharp enough, but I don't know as I should see them
coming. Let's ask the Beaver what he says."

"The Beaver-with-Sharp-Teeth has heard all you said," whispered the
interpreter, "and he says that the Apaches will come before long to find
the way into the camp, and then they will go away again if they do not
die."

A curious silence seemed to fall after this, and Bart felt, as he
crouched there watching the plains, that something very terrible was
going to happen ere long. At another time he would have been drowsy,
but now sleep was the last thing of which he thought, all his nerves
being overwrought; and as his eyes swept the wide flat plain, he kept on
fancying that sooner or later he would see the Apaches coming up to them
with the slow, silent approach of so many shadows.

And now it suddenly struck Bart that the shadow of the mountain was
shorter than when the moon first rose, and that its edges were more
boldly defined, and by this he knew, of course, that the moon was
getting higher. At the same time though, soft fleecy clouds began to
hide the stars, and at times the shadow of the mountain was blotted out,
for the moon was from time to time obscured, and the peculiar
indistinctness of the earth seemed to Bart as exactly suited for an
enemy's approach.

A slight movement at his side told him that this was the Indians' idea
as well, and that to a man they were eagerly scanning the plain and the
rugged patches of rock beneath.

Every here and there the fallen masses were piled-up into buttresses,
and it was amongst these that, after failing to keep his attention upon
the misty plain, Bart let his gaze wander till at last he became
convinced that he could see some dark patch in slow motion, and it was
long enough before he could satisfy himself that it was only