Close at hand was a piñon tree, which spread out low-growing branches all about. Nat, as he spied it, decided that if he could get within its leafy screen unobserved he would, if luck favored him, escape the observation of the two men--one of whom he was certain now, must be the famous, or infamous, Col. Morello himself.
Without any repetition of the unlucky accident of the minute before, he crept to the trunk of the tree and hoisted himself noiselessly up. As he had surmised, the upper branches made a comfortable resting place impervious to the view from below.
Hardly had he made himself secure, before the horses of the two outlaws approached the tree and, rather to Nat's consternation, halted almost immediately beneath it.
Could the keen-eyed leader of the outlaw band have discovered his hiding place? It was the most anxious moment of the boy's life.
Few men, and still fewer boys, have ever been called upon to face the agonizing suspense which Nat underwent in the next few seconds. So close were the men to his hiding place that his nostrils could scent the sharp, acrid odor of their cigarettes. He was still enough as he crouched breathless upon the limb to have been carved out of wood, like the branch upon which he rested. He did not even dare to wink his eyes for fear of alarming the already aroused suspicions of the two men below him.
"Guess those jays got scared at a lion or something," presently decided the man who had been addressed as "colonel."
Nat, peering through his leafy screen, could see him as he sat upright on his heavy saddle of carved leather and looked about him with a pair of hawk-like eyes.
Colonel Morello, for Nat had guessed correctly when he concluded that the man was the famous leader, was a man of about fifty years, with a weather-beaten face, seamed and lined by years of exposure and hard living. But his eye, as has been said, was as keen and restless as an eagle's. A big scar made a livid mark across his cheek indicating the course of a bullet, fired years before when Morello had been at the head of a band of Mexican revolutionists. In that capacity, indeed, he had earned his brevet rank of "colonel."
A broad-brim gray sombrero, with a silver embossed band of leather about it, crowned the outlaw chief's head of glossy black hair, worn rather long and streaked with gray. Across his saddle horn rested a long-barrelled automatic rifle, of latest make and pattern. For the rest his clothes were those of an everyday mountaineer with the exception of a wide red sash. His horse was a fine buckskin animal, and was almost as famous in Sierran legend as its redoubtable master.