This was the kind of man that Westy had to get away from. For he found it unthinkable that he and his companions should be shot down and left in that wild region, a prey to vultures. He tortured himself with the appalling thought that perhaps the great bird he had just seen and heard was one of those horrible creatures of uncanny instinct waiting patiently among its aerial crags for the bodies of the slain; for him, Westy Martin! He had been able to realize, or rather to believe, that he was alone in the Rockies. He had, in the few moments that he had been there, indulged the thrilling reflection that he was actually in the storied region where grizzlies prowled, and other savage beasts woke the echoes with their calls, where eagles screamed in their dizzy and inaccessible domains. He had thrilled to the thought that he was at least within the limits of that once trackless wonderland of adventure where guides and trappers, famed in his country’s romantic lore, had wrought miracles renowned in the annals of scouting.
But Westy had not carried these reflections so far as to include the reality which now confronted him. He had been a trapper for a few sweet moments; he had penetrated the wilds after Indians—in his imagination, which is always a safe place to hunt. And now suddenly here he was, actually trapped in the Rocky Mountains; the victim of cold-blooded desperadoes. His life hung by a thread. His killing would be a trifling incident in the aftermath of a typical western train robbery.
It was odd how ready his imagination had been to feast upon the perils of the Wild West and how his blood turned cold at this true Western adventure into which he was drawn. The day before, in his comfortable seat in the speeding train, he would have said that such a thing as this was just impossible. It would have been all right in the books; but as involving him, Westy Martin, why, the very thought of it would have been absurd.
Yet there he was. There he was, the thing was a reality, and he knew that every chance was against him. He wondered what Shining Sun, the red boy, that silent master of the forest, would have done in this predicamen............