One night they heard a drum beat. It came out of the distance faint
but distinct, throbbing across the darkness like a frightened heart
terrified by its own loneliness. The hand of man was impelling it, an
unseen hand, only telling of its presence by the thin tattoo it sent
through the silence. Words died and they sat rigid in the sudden alarm
that comes upon men in the wilderness. The doctor clutched his
daughter's arm, Daddy John reached for his rifle. Then, abruptly as it
had come, it stopped and they broke into suggestions--emigrants on the
road beyond them, an Indian war drum on the opposite bank.
But they were startled, their apprehensions roused. They sat uneasy,
and half an hour later the pad of horses' hoofs and approaching voices
made each man grip his gun and leap to his feet. They sent a hail
through the darkness and an answering voice came back:
"It's all right. Friends."
The figures that advanced into the firelight were those of four men
with a shadowy train of pack mules extending behind them. In fringed
and greasy buckskins, with long hair and swarthy faces, their feet
noiseless in moccasins, they were so much of the wild, that it needed
the words, "Trappers from Laramie," to reassure the doctor and make
Leff put down his rifle.
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