Page:Edward Ellis--Alden the Pony Express Rider.djvu/218

 had taken only two or three minutes. In the mean time, if there was any danger of thoughtlessness, it was removed by the sight of that feathered shaft protruding from the back of the poor fellow who lay on the flinty earth.

The reasonable supposition was that the redskin who had discharged the missile was in a position to drive others with equal deadliness and that he would do so. In all probability there were more than one of them. Why the African youth was permitted to ride away unmolested, and Alden Payne to climb into the saddle without harm would be hard to explain, but such was the fact.

Alden kept looking across the gorge and at all the points from which a missile might come. He saw nothing which was not strange, but before he could give the word to Dick an arrow whizzed in front of his face so close that he blinked. Rather curiously the emotion roused by this occurrence was that of flaming rage. We know Alden had a quick temper. Had it been otherwise, he would not have dared to do what he did the next minute.

When he glanced across the ravine, he saw his man, or rather two men. The warriors had