Page:Edward Ellis--Alden the Pony Express Rider.djvu/261

 mass of stone on the right near the top. It was at a wide part of the ravine, and the peculiar shape of the rocks left a partial cavity behind the jutting portion large enough to hold several persons.

And in this depression three Indians, looking much like the one he had left out of sight, had evidently just risen from the ground and stood motionless as if watching him as he skurried from them. They must have been there when he rode beneath within fifty feet of where they were lying in ambush.

Alden was dumfounded. What could it all mean? After watching and probably signaling they had waited till he rode right into the trap and then had allowed him to ride out again, unharmed and all unsuspicious of his peril.

“That is too much for me,” mused the perplexed youth; “I spared one of them when I had him dead to rights, but why should those three spare me? That isn’t the way—”

Could those odd sounding signals which the single warrior sent forward from his perch on the rocks have had anything to do with it? Did they cause the forbearance of his comrades farther up the gorge? That such should be