he leaned far over the high pommel of his cavalry saddle, his short
carbine well advanced, his trained eyes seeking vainly to pierce the
mystery in our front.




CHAPTER III

AN UNWELCOME GUEST


This was the sort of work I had long ago learned to love; it warmed the
blood, this constant certainty of imminent peril, this intense
probability that any moment might bring a flash of flame into our very
faces. Each step we took was now a stern, grim play with Fate, where
the stakes were life and death. I felt my pulses throb as I rode
steadily forward, fairly thrusting the darkness aside, my teeth hard
set, my left hand heavy on a revolver butt.

How, in such a situation, the nerves tingle and the heart bounds to
each strange sight and sound! Halt!--what was that? Pooh! no more than
the deeper shadow of a sharply projecting rock, around which we pick
careful way, our horses crowding against each other in the narrow
space. And that? Nothing but the faint moan of the night wind amid the
dead limbs of a tree. Ah! mark that sudden flash of light! The hand
that closes iron-like upon the loosened rein opens again, for it was
merely a star silently falling from out the black depths of the sky.
Then both of us halt at once, and peer anxiously forward. The figure
standing directly in the centre of our path, can it be a sentry at