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Updated: May 10, 2025
It was a wonder how the thing could be done, without sending streams of gravel and pebbles rattling to the bottom. Hardynge straightened up, still peering around in the gloom. The moments wore away and still he was able to detect that soft, faint gliding, as if a rattlesnake were getting into a position to strike its prey.
"I'll match them Apaches agin the world for shrewd deviltry," exclaimed Hardynge, unable to suppress his admiration even in the moment which told him of his own increased personal danger. "By some hook or crook, the Old Boy only knows what, they've found out my game, and are after me. Ah! if I only had my mustang, Thundergust, with me!"
At the very instant Hardynge made the charge, Lone Wolf did the same, and the two similar blows, aimed at the same moment, encountered half way with such terrible violence that both knives were hurled twenty feet beyond over the cliff at their side, and irrevocably beyond their reach.
It may have been fancy, but Tom Hardynge maintained that he was able to recognize Lone Wolf among the redskins on the right, and when a short time afterward Dick Morris emphatically asserted the same thing, it began to look as if the belief were well founded. The sun was quite low in the sky, and the gait of the mustangs began to tell upon them.
He was anxious to get forward, for delay was dangerous and he felt annoyed at the manner in which he was dogged. "Here goes," he exclaimed, starting the canoe forward again. "If that Apache is anxious for a scrimmage, he can have one." Hardynge was too skillful a hunter to place himself directly in the way of the Apache whom he knew to be the most treacherous kind of an enemy.
It was in the wildest part of the Indian country, and Tom Hardynge, the hunter, runner and bearer of all dispatches between the frontier posts in the extreme southwest, knew very well that for three days past it had been his proverbial good fortune, or rather a special Providence, that had kept his scalp from ornamenting the lodge of some marauding Comanche or Apache.
Indeed, with the exception of the rather important fact that he had secured possession of a rifle and some ammunition, it may be said that his position was very similar to what it was before he came across Dick Morris and Tom Hardynge. It struck Ned that there was something very strange in the continued absence of the two hunters.
The words of Tom Hardynge, declining the assistance of his friend, were understood by Lone Wolf; but, treacherous and faithless himself, he regarded them as only a part of a trap in which he was to be caught, and his whole purpose was to get out of the dilemma as quickly as possible.
He was certain there were other warriors near by, and any such attempt would complicate matters. Accordingly they stole away with their recaptured animals and the one which was not exactly recaptured, and as soon as a convenient spot was selected Hardynge turned back for the boy, encountering him on the way.
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