e river. The others followed him without a word, but
nearly every man in the company drew a long breath of satisfaction. Ned
knew and all knew that they were not going back to camp that night.

Ned eagerly watched the leader. They rode by the Mission Concepcion,
passed through a belt of timber and came abruptly to the river, where
Bowie called a halt, and sprang from his horse. Ned leaped down also,
and he saw at once the merits of the position into which Bowie had led
them. They were in a horseshoe or sharp bend of the river, here a
hundred yards in width. The belt of thick timber curved on one side
while the river coiled in a half-circle about them and in front of the
little tongue of land on which they stood, the bank rose to a height of
eighteen feet, almost perpendicular. It was a secluded place, and, as no
Mexicans had been following them in the course of the last hour, Ned
believed that they might pass a peaceful night there. But the Ring
Tailed Panther had other thoughts, although, for the present, he kept
them to himself.

They tethered the horses at the edge of the wood, but where they could
reach the grass, and then Bowie placed numerous pickets in the wood
through which an enemy must come, if he came. Ned was in the first watch
and Obed and the Ring Tailed Panther were with him. Ned stood among the
trees at a point where he could also see the river, here a beautiful,
clear stream with a greenish tint. He ate venison from his knapsack as
he walked back and forth, and he watched the last rays of the sun,
burning like red fire in the west, until they went out and the heavy
twilight came, trailing after it the dark.

Ned's impression of mediaevalism that he had received in the day when
they were riding about San Antonio continued in the night. They had gone
back centuries. Hidden here in this horseshoe, water on one side and
wood on the other, they seemed to be in an absolutely wild and primitive
world. Centuries had rolled back. His vivid imagination made the forest
about them what it had been before the white man came.

The surface of the river was now dark. The stream flowed gently, and
without noise. It, too, struck upon the boy's imagination. It would be
fitting for an Indian canoe to come stealing down in the darkness, and
he almost fancied he could see it there. But no canoe came, and Ned
walked back and forth in a little space, always watching the wood or the
river.

The night was very quiet. The ho