Page:Edward Ellis--Alden the Pony Express Rider.djvu/228

 rear, for in that part of the world, danger comes from one direction as often as from the other.

While scrutinizing the ridge which showed a considerable growth of dwarfed pine, Alden was startled to observe a thin column of smoke issuing from a point on the crest. The bluish vapor climbed straight up into the clear sky, where it slowly dissolved. Its course showed that not the slightest breeze was blowing.

“It looks like an Indian signal,” he thought; “I wonder if it has anything to do with me.”

He brought his binocular to the front and raised it to his eyes. Little resulted from the action. The fire which caused the vapor was burning behind a rock, beyond reach of the glass. He could not catch the faintest sight of it.

The natural supposition was that if this finger of smoke was a signal from one party of red men to another, something would show in the nature of a reply. He swept every point of the horizon with the instrument, but that which he dreaded to see he did not discover. Still this fact might signify nothing.

Alden could not rid himself of the fear that the signal referred to him. Its precise