And by careful work he was enabled
to get closer to the well, and somewhat above it.
The Mexicans were leisurely cooking their morning meal. They
had two fires, one for warmth, the other to cook over. Gale had
an idea these raiders were familiar to him. It seemed all these
border hawks resembled one another--being mostly small of build,
wiry, angular, swarthy-faced, and black-haired, and they wore
the oddly styled Mexican clothes and sombreros. A slow wrath
stirred in Gale as he watched the trio. They showed not the
slightest indication of breaking camp. One fellow, evidently the
leader, packed a gun at his hip, the only weapon in sight. Gale
noted this with speculative eyes. The raiders had slept inside
the little adobe house, and had not yet brought out the carbines.
Next Gale swept his gaze to the corral, in which he saw more than
a dozen horses, some of them fine animals. They were stamping
and whistling, fighting one another, and pawing the dirt. This
was entirely natural behavior for desert horses penned in when they
wanted to get at water and grass.
But suddenly one of the blacks, a big, shaggy fellow, shot up his
ears and pointed his nose over the top of the fence. He whistled.
Other horses looked in the same direction, and their ears went up,
and they, too, whistled. Gale knew that other horses or men, very
likely both, were approaching. But the Mexicans did not hear the
alarm, or show any interest if they did.
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