The Quest of the Four. Joseph A. Altsheler
arose.
"I've no doubt it was a stump, a real stump," one of the older men said.
A deep flush overspread Phil's face.
"I saw a Comanche with long black hair rise from the water," he said.
The man who had spoken grinned a little, but the expression of his face showed that doubt had solidified into certainty.
"A case of nerves," he said, "but I don't blame you so much, bein' only a boy."
Phil felt his blood grow hot, but he tried to restrain his temper.
"I certainly saw a Comanche," he said, "and there were others behind him!"
"Then what's become of all this terrible attack?"! asked the man ironically.
"Come! Come!" said Woodfall. "We can't have such talk. The boy may have made a mistake, but the incident showed that he was watching well, just what we want our sentinels to do."
Phil flushed again. Woodfall's tone was kindly, but he was hurt by the implication of possible doubt and mistake. Yet Woodfall and the others had ample excuse for such doubts. There was not the remotest sign of an enemy. Could he really have been mistaken? Could it have been something like a waking dream? Could his nerves have been so upset that they made his eyes see that which was not? He stared for a full minute at the empty face of the river, and then a voice called:
"Oh, you men, come down here! I've something to show you!"
It was Bill Breakstone, who had slipped away from them and gone down the bank. His voice came from a point at least a hundred yards down the stream, and the men in a group followed the sound of it, descending the slope with the aid of weeds and bushes. Bill was standing at the edge of a little cove which the water had hollowed out of the soft soil, and something dark lay at his feet.
"I dragged this out of the water," he said. "It was floating along, when an eddy brought it into this cove."
They looked down, and Phil shut off a cry with his closed teeth. The body, a Comanche warrior, entirely naked, lay upon its back. There was a bullet hole in the center of the forehead. The features, even in death, were exactly those that the boy had seen rising from the water, sinister, savage, terrible beyond expression. Phil felt a cold horror creeping through all his bones, but it was the look of this dead face more than the fact that he had killed a man. He shuddered to think what so much malignant cruelty could have done had it gained the chance.
"Well, men," said Bill Breakstone quietly, "was the story our young friend here told such stuff as dreams are made on, or did it really happen?"
"The boy told the truth, and he was watching well," said a half dozen together.
The old frontiersman who had so plainly expressed his disbelief in Phil--Gard was his name--extended his hand and said to the lad:
"I take it all back. You've saved us from an ambush that would have cost us a lot of men. I was a fool. Shake hands."
Phil, with a great leap of pride, took the proffered hand and shook it heartily.
"I don't blame you, Mr. Gard," he said. "Things certainly looked against me."
"The Comanches naturally took to flight when their leader was killed," said Woodfall. "They could not carry through such an attempt without surprise, but good eyes stopped them."
Phil's heart leaped again with pride, but he said nothing. They climbed back up the slope, and the guard in the timber was tripled for the short time until day. Phil was told that, as he had already done so much, he might go off duty now.
He was glad enough to seek rest, and so rapidly was he becoming used to danger that he lay down calmly before one of the fires and went to sleep again. He awoke two or three hours later to a crisp fresh morning, and to the news that the train would promptly resume its advance, whether or not Comanches tried to bar the way. With the intoxicating odor of victory still in their nostrils, the hardy frontiersmen were as willing as ever for another combat. But the enemy had disappeared completely. A brilliant sun rose over the gray-green swells, disclosing nothing but a herd of antelope that grazed far to the right.
"The antelope mean that no Comanches are near," said Arenberg. "The warriors will now wait patiently and a long time for a good opportunity. Sometimes much harm iss done where much iss intended."
"That is so," chanted Bill Breakstone.
"Over the plains we go,
Our rifles clear the way.
The Indians would say no.
Our band they cannot stay.
"As I have often remarked before, Phil, my poetry may be defective in meter and some other small technicalities, but it comes to the point. That, I believe, was the characteristic of Shakespeare, also. I agree, too, with Arenberg, that the Comanches will not trouble us again for some time. So, I pray thee, be of good cheer, Sir Philip of the Merry Countenance, Knight of the Battle beside the Unknown River, Slayer of Comanches in the Dark, Guardian of the Public Weal, et cetera, et cetera."
"I am cheerful," said Phil, to whom Breakstone was always a tonic, "and I believe that we can beat off the Comanches any time and every time."
"Jump on your horse," said Breakstone, a little later; "we're all ready."
Phil leaped into the saddle with one bound. The train moved forward, and he and Breakstone joined Middleton and Arenberg at its head. Middleton had powerful glasses, and he swept the plain far ahead, and to right and left. His gaze finally settled on a point to the south-west. The others followed his look with great interest, but the naked eye could see nothing but the rolling gray-green plains and the dim blue horizon beyond. Middleton looked so long that at last Bill Breakstone asked:
"What do you see?"
"I do not see anything that I can really call living," replied Middleton, "but I do see a knoll or slight elevation on the plain--what would be called farther north a butte--and on that knoll is a black blur, shapeless and unnamable at this distance."
"Does the black blur move?" asked Bill Breakstone.
"I cannot tell. It is too far even for that, but from it comes a beam of brilliant light that shifts here and there over the plain. Take a look, Bill."
Breakstone eagerly put the glasses to his eyes, and turned them upon the knoll.
"Ah, I see it!" he exclaimed. "It's like a ball of light! There it goes to the right! There it goes to the left! Now it falls in our direction! What in the name of Shakespeare's thirty-five or forty plays is it, Cap?"
"Let me have the glasses, I want another look," replied Middleton.
His second look was a long one taken in silence. At last he replied:
"It's a signal, lads. I've seen the Comanches talk to one another in this way before. A Comanche chief is sitting on his horse on top of that knoll. He holds a rounded piece of looking-glass in the hollow of his hand, and he turns it in such a way that he catches the very concentrated essence of the sun's rays, throwing a beam a tremendous distance. The beam, like molten gold, now strikes the grass on top of a swell off toward the north. It's a secret just how they do it, for not yet has any white man learned the system of signals which they make with such a glass. Ah!"
The "Ah!" came forth, so deep, so long drawn, and so full of meaning that Phil, Arenberg, and Bill Breakstone exclaimed together:
"What is it?"
"I would not have known that the black blur on top of the knoll was a chief on horseback if I had not been on the Texas plains before," replied Middleton, "but now I can make out the figures of horse and man, as he is riding around and around in a circle and riding very rapidly."
"What does that mean?" asked Phil.
"It means danger, not to us, but to the Comanches. The warrior is probably signaling to a band of his tribe who are meditating attack upon us that we