Mickey O'Rooney was particularly busy just then with his culinary operations, and he stared at the lad with an expression of comical amazement that made the young fellow laugh.

"Begorrah, why don't ye talk sinse?" added Mickey, impatiently. "I've heard Soot Simpson say that if ye only put your shot in the right spot, ye don't want but one of 'em to trip the biggest grizzly that ever navigated.

I was going to obsarve that ye had been mighty lucky to send in your two pistol-shots just where they settled the business, though I s'pose the haythen was so close on ye whin ye fired that ye almost shoved the weapon into his carca.s.s."

"I shot him, Mickey, before I fairly started to run, but he didn't mind it any more than if I spit in his face. It was your own shot that did the business."

"Me own shot!" repeated Mickey, still staring with an astonished expression. "I never fired any shot at the baste, and never saw him till a few minutes ago, when I was coming this way."

It was Fred Munson's turn to be astonished, and he asked, in his amazed, wondering way:

"Who, then, fired the shot that killed him? I didn't."

"I thought ye did the same, for it was not mesilf."

The lad was more puzzled than ever. He saw that Mickey was in earnest, and was telling him the truth, and each, in fact, understood that _he_ had been under a misapprehension as to who had slain the grizzly bear.

"The beast was right on me," continued Fred, "and I didn't think there was any chance for me, when I heard the crack of a rifle from the bushes, and, looking back, saw that the bear was down on the ground, making his last kick."

Mickey let the meat scorch, while he stopped to scratch his head, as was his custom when he was in a mental fog.

"Begorrah, but that is queer, as me mither used to obsarve when she found she had not been desaved by belaving what we childer told her. There was somebody who was kind enough to knock over the grizzly at the most convanient season for ye, and then he doesn't choose to send over his card wid his post-office address on."

"Who do you think it was, Mickey?"

"It must have been some red spalpeen that took pity on ye. Who knows but it was Lone Wolf himself?"

Both looked about them in a scared, inquiring way, but could see nothing of their unknown friend or enemy, as the case might be.

"I tell you, Mickey, that it makes me feel as if we ought to get out of here."

"Ye're right, and we'll just swally some of this stuff, and then we'll 'light out."

He tossed the lad a goodly-sized piece of meat, which, if anything, was overdone. Both ate more rapidly than was consistent with hygiene, their eyes continually wandering over the rocks and heights around them, in quest of their seemingly ever-present enemies, the Apaches. It required but a few moments for them to, complete their dinner. Mickey, in accordance with his custom, carefully folded up what was left, and, taking a drink from the stream which ran near at hand, they sprang upon the backs of their mustangs, and headed westward in the direction of New Boston, provided such a settlement was still in existence by the grace of Lone Wolf, leader of the Apaches.

"Now," said Mickey, whose spirits seemed to rise when he found himself astride of his trusty mustang again, "if we don't have any bad luck, we ought to be out of the mountains by dark."

"And after that?"

"Then a good long ride across the prairie, and we'll be back again wid the folks."

"How glad I am that father isn't there, that he staid at Fort Aubray, for when he comes along in a few weeks, he won't know anything about this trouble till I tell him the whole story myself, and then it will be too late for him to worry."

"Yes, I'm glad it's so, for it saams if I had a spalpeen of a son off wid Lone Wolf, among the mountains, I'd feel as bad as if he'd gone in swimming where the water was over his head. And then it will be so nice to sit down and tell the ould gintleman about it, and have him lambaste ye 'cause you wasn't more respictful to Lone Wolf. All them things are cheerful, and make the occasion very plisant. Begorrah, I should like to know where that old redskin is, for Soot Simpson tells me that he is the greatest redskin down in this part of the world. He's the spalpeen that robbed a government train and made himself a big blanket out of the new greenbaeks that he stole. Soot says that there isn't room on his lodge-pole for half the scalps that he has taken. Bad luck to the spalpeen, he will peel the topknot from the head of a lovely woman, or swaat child, such as I used to be, as quick as he would from the crown of a man of my size. He's an old riprobate, is the same, and Soot says he can niver die resigned and at pace with all mankind till he shoots him."

"I'll be very glad to keep out of his way, if he'll keep out of mine. I wonder why he didn't kill me when he had the chance, instead of keeping me so long."

"I s'pose he meant to carry ye up where his little spalpeens live, and turn ye over to them for their amus.e.m.e.nt."

"How could I amuse them?"

"There be a good many ways. They might have stuck little wooden pegs in your hide, then set fire to 'em, and then walked ye round for fireworks; or they might fill your ears with powder, and tech it off, and then watched the iligant exprission of your countenance. Or they might lave set ye to running up and down between two rows of 'em, about eight or ten miles long, while aich stood with a big shillalah in his hand, and banged ye over the head with it as ye pa.s.sed. There be a good many ways, according to what Soot told me, but that's enough to show ye that Lone Wolf and his folks wouldn't have been at a loss to find delightful ways of giving the little childher the innocent sport they must have."

"I shouldn't think they would, if that's the kind of fun they like,"

replied the horrified boy. "I've thanked the Lord hundreds of times that He helped me get out of Lone Wolf's clutches, and my dread is that he may catch us before we can get out of the mountain. I don't believe we could find as good a chance as I did the other night."

"Ye're right; that thing couldn't happen ag'in. Lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place; but we've got good horses, and if he don't pin us up in the pa.s.s, I think our chance is as good as could be asked."

"That's what troubles me," said Fred, who was galloping at his side, and who kept continually glancing from the tops of the rocks upon the right to the tops upon the left. "You know there are Indians all over, and I wonder that some of them haven't seen us already. S'pose they do, and they're behind us, they can signal to somebody ahead, and the first thing we know, they've got us shut in on both sides."

"That thing may happen," replied Mickey, who did not appear as apprehensive as his young friend; "but I have the best of hope that the same won't. I don't think Lone Wolf knows we're anywhere around here, and before he can find out, I also hope we shall be beyond his raich."

CHAPTER XIV.

BETWEEN TWO FIRES.

Mickey had scarcely given utterance to this hopeful remark when he drew up his mustang with a spasmodic jerk and exclaimed, in a startled in a startled voice:

"Do you see _that_?"

As he spoke, he pointed some distance ahead, where a faint, thin column of smoke was seen rising from the top of the rocks on the opposite side of the canon or pa.s.s.

It will be remembered that the pa.s.s of which our two friends availed themselves is the only one leading through the section of the mountains which lies to the eastward of the Rio Pecos. That part over which Fred and Mickey were riding showed numerous winding trails, made by the hoofs of the horses, as they pa.s.sed back and forth, bearing Apaches, Comanches, Kiowas, and, very rarely, white men. At no very distant intervals were observed human skeletons and bones, while they were scarcely ever out of sight of the remains of horses or wild animals; all of which told their tale of the scenes of violence that had taken place in that highway of the mountains.

Sometimes war-parties of the tribes mentioned encountered each other in the gorge, and pa.s.sed each other in sullen silence, or, perchance, they dashed together like so many wild beasts, fighting with the fury of a thousand Kilkenny cats. It was as the whim happened to rule the leaders.

The rocks rose perpendicularly on both sides to the height of fifty and a hundred feet, the upper contour being irregular, and varying in every manner imaginable. Along the upper edge of the pa.s.s grew vegetation, while here and there, along the side, some tree managed to obtain a precarious foothold, and sprouted forth toward the sun. The floor of the canon was of a varied nature--rocks, boulders, gra.s.s, streams of water, gravel, sand, and barren soil, alternating with each other and preventing anything like an accurate description of any particular section. A survey of this curious specimen of nature's highway suggested the idea that the solid mountain had been rent for many leagues by an earthquake, which, having opened this great seam or rent, had left it gradually to adjust itself to the changed order of things, and to be availed of by those who were seeking a safe and speedy transit through the almost impa.s.sable mountains.

Mickey and Fred checked their mustangs and carefully scrutinized the line of smoke. It was several hundred yards in advance, on their left, while they were following a trail that led close to the right of the canon. They could distinguish nothing at all that could give any additional information.

The fire which gave rise to the vapor had been kindled just far enough back to cause the edge of the gorge to protrude itself in such a way as to shut it off from the eyes of those below. Indeed, it was not to be supposed that those who had the matter in charge would commit any oversight which would reveal themselves or their purpose to those from whom they desired to keep them.

"That is the same as the camp-fire which troubled the three Apaches so much, and which was the means of my giving them the slip."

"It must have been started by some other war-party, so that their ca'c'lations were upsit, and you had a chance to get away during the muss.

It was a sort of free fight, you see, in which, instead of staying and getting your head cracked, you stepped down and lift."

Unable to make anything of this particular signal-fire, the two friends carefully searched for more. Had they been able to discover one in the rear, they would have been a.s.sured that signaling was going on, and they would not have dared to venture forward. Here and there along the sides of the canon were openings or crevices, generally filled with some sort of a vegetable growth, and into most of which quite a number of men could have taken refuge, but which, of course, were inaccessible to their horses.

"I can't find anything that resimbles the same," said Mickey, alluding to the camp-fire, "though there may be some one that is seen by the gintlemen who are cooking their shins by yon one."

"Will it do to go on?"

"It won't do to do anything else. Like enough the spalpeen yonder has obsarved us coming, and he knows that there's a party behind us, and, being unable to do anything himsilf, he starts up the fire so as to scare us, and turn us back into the hands of the spalpeens coming in our rear.

Mind, I say that such may be the case, but I ain't sure that it is."