They were still down there amid the brush and rocks. He could smell the food they were cooking even though he could not make out where their camp-fire was. Yet Iron Eyes was seldom hungry at the best of times, and this was far from being the best of times. Only one thought filled his mind as droplets of blood continued to drip from the limp strands of his long hair: was it possible to escape? Nothing had ever defeated him before, but this time he knew that he was in a pretty tight spot. Since the Apache had stopped their attack he had used up the seemingly eternal time to good purpose. He had used the razor-sharp edge of his knife to trim all the cigar fragments he had found in his pockets into a score of smaller smokes. And he had waited. Waited to see if the Indians were trying to fool him into thinking that they would not fight during the night. So far they had not tried to do anything and the bounty hunter began to believe that he was safe until sunrise. He gripped one of the cigar trimmings in his teeth and looked around the cave as the moonlight crept deeper into it.
