The captain of the train set one of his watchmen on the bank above the river, however, and to keep warm the rifleman walked back and forth, pacing a beat some twenty yards long. This would have been all very well had the crew believed there was a particle of danger threatening the camp. But so confident were they of peace that they did not even drive the mules down from the higher ground where they were feeding. A party of a dozen reds--if they could have loosed the gray mare--might have made off with the entire herd. There was a shelter tent for each six men, while the cook and the captain shared the fourth canvas. At ten o’clock, under a black-velvet sky pricked out with the brilliant but distant stars, the camp was as quiet as the grave--that is, providing one could imagine some of the occupants of the grave sleeping their long sleep “loudly.” Aside from these snores, however, and the champing of the horses and mules, there was little sound to break the silence. There was a sentinel pacing a short beat on the inland side of the camp; but, it being cold when the wind swooped down and flapped the loose canvas, he got in behind the chain of wagons and was not so much use as a guard. Along the river-bank paced the other sentinel, whistling under his breath, and staring off across the black, smoothly flowing water, in which the stars were mirrored. Wide-awake as he was, this second guard heard nothing when a single figure slipped down the river-bank beyond the camp and toward the cañon’s entrance, and in a stooping posture sneaked along toward him. This figure lay low upon the shore when the guard walked that way. When the guard turned the prowler arose again and kept just behind him, but below the bank, until both reached about the middle of the beat the sentinel was following. Then, softly as a cat, without as much as scratching a button or rattling the rifle in his hand or the guns in his belt, the stranger darted up the bank, and, stooping low, hurried to the smaller tent in which slept the captain of the train and the cook. Evidently the stranger had picked this tent out before dark, and shrewdly guessed who occupied it. Lifting the flap softly, he crept in and lowered it before the guard on the river-bank turned. The other guard was standing facing the opposite way and saw nothing. Once in the darkness of the tent, the stranger coolly squatted on his haunches, laid down his rifle, and drawing out a match-safe, scratched a lucifer and held it up so that the sputtering flame might cast some radiance over the interior of the tent.