at would be the best?"

Chris set his teeth and thought hard so as to decide what would be the
proper thing to do.

"Why, it's all simple enough," he said to himself at last. "I'm posted
here to give them warning when the Indians are coming. Well, if it's
too dark for me to see them coming I can't give any notice, and if I
can't do what I'm sent here for I should be better back at the camp."

He looked along the gloomy gulch to see that the light was gone from the
crags that shut-in the narrow way, while the bottom of the gulch was
black with shadow, so dark that any one approaching would have been
perfectly invisible.

"Yes," he said to himself, "it's of no use for me to stay here. I can't
see anything, and if the savages rode up it would be too late to try to
give warning. I'll go back."

But he did not stir, only sat thinking in a fresh groove.

"Father won't think me cowardly, will he?"

That was a horrible idea, one which made the boy's cheeks burn for a
minute, until his common-sense told him that no such injustice could
fall to his lot.

"Of course not," he argued. "I was sent here to do my best. I've done
my best, and now I can do no more. I say, how black it is," he said
half-aloud, and then he felt blank, faced as he was by another
difficulty--how was he going to get back along the trackless path
encumbered with stones and with rifts and tufts of very thorny bushes
here and there?

It was a poser.

There was a dull streak of sky overhead, in which a star here and there
could be seen blinking and looking pale.

"I can't see beyond the pony's head," thought Chris. "Why, it's madness
to try and ride along a place like this; but it's horrible to think of
sitting here all night, and one couldn't go to sleep. I'm so hungry
too, and--Oh, I say, who'd ever have thought of this? What a mess I'm
in!"

There was nothing approaching despair in the boy's feelings then,
neither was there anything akin to fear, unless it was a dread of being
suddenly pounced upon by the Indians now.

This thought had quite a comic side to it, and he laughed softly.

"They'd be precious clever--ten times as clever as they're said to be,
with their wonderful sight and hearing--if they did pounce upon me now.
Why, look at that."

It was rather an absurd order which he gave himself, as he stretched out
his right-hand at the level of his eye, for to all intents and purposes
there was no hand to look at, while as to h