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Updated: May 10, 2025
Then, while Tom Hardynge began adjusting his outer garments, Dick Morris stooped over and drew forth the blanket which was crumpled beneath the dead warrior.
If the Apaches had any fear of being followed, they were very likely to detect the men stealing down upon them; but much reliance was placed upon the likelihood of their holding no such suspicion. The afternoon was half gone when the locality pointed out by Hardynge was reached, and the three halted again.
Dick Morris, stretched out full length upon the top of Hurricane Hill, peering down in the impenetrable gloom, understood all that had passed. There was no mistaking that yell of Tom Hardynge; he had heard it many a time before in the heat of conflict, and it generally meant something. "Go it, old chap!" he shouted, swinging his hat over his head, as he saw the whole thing in his imagination.
He noticed that Tom Hardynge, shading his eyes with his hand, was gazing off with a fixed intensity in the direction of the mountains which intervened between them and Fort Havens. He said nothing, but there was a significance in his persistency which aroused the curiosity of the lad in no small degree.
Each was in middle life, embrowned, hardened, and toughened by years of exposure and the wild life of the border; but Tom Hardynge was taller, more sinewy and active than Dick Morris, who was below the medium stature, with a stunted appearance; but he was a powerful man, wonderfully skillful in the use of the rifle, and the two friends together made the strongest possible kind of a team.
Tom Hardynge, his friend and companion in many a perilous adventure, understood what it all meant the instant he had finished reading the writing upon the buffalo skin. By some means probably through the Indian runners encountered while hunting his game he had learned the particulars of the expedition that had been arranged to attack and massacre the escort.
The three rode along in silence for something like half an hour longer, when Hardynge, who was slightly in advance, abruptly reined up his steed and said: "We're through the mountains. There's the prairie afore us." The moon was now well up in the sky, and the members of the party were enabled to discern objects at a greater distance than at any time since starting.
As the scout rode his mustang up to the tree whereon the buffalo skin was fastened, he read the following words: "To Tom Hardynge: The stage which left Santa Fe on the 10th inst., is due at Fort Havens between the 20th and 25th, but it will never reach there. It has an escort of a dozen mounted soldiers, but they can't save it.
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.
"That's your game, is it?" exclaimed the scout. "If it is, sail in, and may the best man win." Both were striking very wildly, when, hastily parrying several blows, Hardynge made a sudden rush, closed in, grasping the chief around the waist, and, lifting him clear of the ground, ran to the edge of the cliff and flung him over! But Hardynge was outwitted.
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