and cautiously, and turned his eyes in the opposite direction.  There also was an open space, and the dim starlight enabled him to discover that between his station and the nearest tree something similar to a rock or ledge protruded.  He peered and listened, then turned around on his knees and flattening his body on the ground began to creep toward the tree.  As soon as he reached its foot he rose to full height, leaned against the trunk, and glanced at the stars.  They indicated that it was past midnight, and Tyope felt uneasy.  In case he should be delayed, and reach the Rito after daylight, it might excite suspicions.  Yet his only safety lay in making a wide circuit.

The dismal yelping of a prairie wolf struck his ear, and to his alarm there was at once a reply near where the interview had taken place, but slightly to the east and more toward the deep gorge in which the Rio Grande flows.  He concluded that Nacaytzusle had shifted his position, by placing himself on Tyope’s supposed line of retreat.  But it was also manifest that the boy had not come to the meeting alone,—­that at least one more Navajo lurked in the vicinity.  At least one, perhaps more.

Another wolf now howled in the direction of the south.  A fourth one was heard farther off, and both voices united in a plaintive wail.  Any one unacquainted with the remarkable perfection with which the Navajos imitate the nocturnal chant of the so-called coyote, would have been deceived, and have taken the sounds for the voices of the animals themselves; but Tyope recognized them as signals through which four Navajo Indians prowling around him informed each other of their positions and movements.  This made his own situation exceedingly critical.  The only mitigating circumstance was that the four were dispersed, and only one of them could as yet have an idea of his whereabouts.

The Indian from the Rito braced himself against the tree, and taking off his helmet laid it carefully beside him on the ground.  Then he took off the quiver, emptied it, and tied the strap to which it was fastened around his waist.  To this belt he tied both the quiver and the helmet, distributing them in such a manner that in the prevailing darkness they appeared like one of the ragged kilts of deerskin which formed the main part of a Navajo’s costume.  Next Tyope untied the knot which held his hair on the back of the head, divided the long strands into switches, and began to wind those around his skull.  Necklace, fetich, and the plume that adorned his sidelock, he put in the quiver.  He was now so far transformed that any one, Nacaytzusle excepted, might have taken him in the night for a Navajo warrior.  This metamorphosis was performed rapidly, but without anxious haste or confusion.  The howls had meanwhile been repeated.  They sounded nearer than before from the east, the south, and the southeast.  Nacaytzusle alone, to judge from the signals which he gave, remained stationary.