“Merciful Heaven! did they say that?” gasped Rattler, his face blanched with terror.
“That’s what they said, and you deserve it. I only hope if you do escape you’ll be half decent in the future; and I guess you will be, for the body of Kleki-Petrah will be a strong medicine for you.”
“Where is the main band of the Apaches which is out against the Kiowas?” I asked.
“I don’t know; nothing was said of that. It doesn’t matter to us.”
Little Sam was mistaken in that; it was far from unimportant to us where this band was, as we discovered in a few days.
Sam continued: “As I had heard enough, I should have come back to you at once; but it was dark, and I couldn’t see the trail till dawn, so I waited. I stayed all night hidden in the wood, and my legs were almost broken. I was six miles from here, and I had to go out of my way to get back unseen. And that is all I have to tell you.”
“But you said you were going to show yourself to them.”
“I know, and I should have done so, only—hark! did you hear anything?”
The scream of an eagle, thrice repeated, came from the woods.
“That’s the Kiowa spies,” he said. “They are over there in the trees. I told them to give me this sign when they saw the Apaches on the savanna. Come, sir; we’ll try what sort of eyes you have.”
This invitation was addressed to me. Sam rose to go, and I took my gun to follow him.
“Hold on,” he said. “Leave that gun here. It’s true the frontiersman should never go out without his weapons, but this is an exception, because we must not seem to have any suspicion of danger. We’ll appear to be gathering wood to make our fire, and the Apaches will conclude we are going to stay here all night.”
We sauntered out, apparently wandering carelessly in and out among the trees and bushes, breaking off the dry branches. We strained our eyes, but could discover no one; yet later I learned from Winnetou himself that fifty feet at most away from us he was hidden behind a bush watching us. We gathered more wood for the camp-fire than we needed, for Sam wanted enough in reserve to enable the Apaches to kindle the fire quickly when they discovered we were gone.
Darkness fell, and we gathered in the camp for the eventful night. Sam, as the most experienced, sat at the end of the grassy plain nearest the savanna, where he could see the coming of the spies for whom we were waiting, knowing they could not be far off. The fire blazed up, lighting the plain and the savanna. How foolish and inexperienced the Apaches must think us! This great fire was the very thing to guide an enemy to us from afar. We ate our supper, and lounged about as if we were far from suspecting any danger. The guns lay at some distance back of us towards the peninsula, ready to be seized by us later in our flight.