Garry! We'll catch 'em yet."

All who had a right to go to sleep, did so as unconcernedly as if they
had been in a hotel. On the whole, it looked as if something else than
peace were on its way into the valley where One-eye was keeping watch
for the smokers. The last man to lie down was the captain, and one of
the wide-awake squad nodded at him and said to another,

"If there was forty alarms 'fore sun-up, old Grover'd be the first man
to turn out every time."

"Not much reg'lation 'bout him."

"But there's lots of fight."

"He can get more hard work out of men and hosses, and he can do more
himself, and he can sleep less, and say less about it all, than any
other captain I ever served under."

That, therefore, was the kind of soldiers from whom the Apaches were
wisely trying to get away, and Garry's carbine had destroyed their
prospect of learning how very near he and his might be. It looked very
much as if two days more of hard riding would bring them into a sort of
trap, with the mountains before and the cavalry behind. Still, even
then, there would be the pass, if they knew where to find it. There
also were One-eye and all of his men and Sile Parks and his party; and
the wicked old mule, too, with his command, was in the valley somewhere.
Only a few days earlier the entire sweep of forest and "open and
mountain-side" had been unoccupied by anything more dangerous or more
interesting than wild game and the wild animals that fed on it. It is
very curious how suddenly immigrants will sometimes pour into a new
country if there is a good trail pointing out the way.

The spot chosen by Yellow Pine for the camp of the mining party was by a
dancing little brook which came down from the mountain to the right of
them, and the path by which they travelled that day had barely kept them
outside of the rocky slopes. Some coyotes came prowling around, to yelp
over the faint smell of roasted meat that floated out to them from the
camp-fires. Once during the night the cry of a wandering cougar came
wailing through the silence and was followed by that of a horned owl who
had noiselessly flapped near enough to blink his great eyes at the
blaze. For all that, it was the loneliest kind of a place, and the hours
went by until sunrise without the smallest real disturbance or hint of
perils to come.

Judge Parks himself was on the watch in the first gray of dawn, and the
camp was dim enough even after there were rosy tints upon t