“Then, according to that, you ought not to take the route which you have said is the right one.”

“I’m spaking for lost spalpeens like yoursilf,” said Mickey, severely.  “I haven’t been lost since I parted company with Soot Simpson, and, begorrah, that minds me that we ought to saa something of him.  Just look around and obsarve whether he is standing anywhere beckoning to us.”

Both used their eyes to the extent of their ability, but were unable to discover anything that bore a suspicious resemblance to a man.

So far as they could judge, they were entirely alone in this vast solitude.

“Do you expect to meet Sut very soon?"’

“Av coorse I do; why shouldn’t I?”

“But he went another way from you altogether after Lone Wolf.”

“That’s just it.  He wint another way, and wint wrong, and he has been gone long ’nough to find out the same.”

“When he will turn back and follow you?”

“As soon as he finds he’s wrong, he’ll go right, and as I wint right, he’ll be on my heels.”

“But you know both of us have strayed a good deal off the track, and we have traveled in many places, where we haven’t made the slightest trail.  How is he going to follow us then?”

The Irishman gave utterance to a scornful exclamation.

“I’ve been with that Soot Simpson long enough to learn something.  I’ve saan some specimens of what he kin do.  Rocks don’t make no difference to him.  When he gits on the track of a wild bird, if it don’t take extra pains to dodge and double, he’ll foller its trail through the air.  Oh, he’s there all the time, and the wonder with me is that he hasn’t turned up before.”

“What would he have done had he come along and found us both in the cave, and the Apaches watching?”

“He would have tracked that wolf back to his hole, come in and fetched us out, and then slipped up behind the six, and tumbled them all in like so many tenpins.”

“If he’s such a wonderful man as that, it’s a pity we couldn’t have kept him with us all the time, and if we do run against him, we can afford to stop thinking about Apaches, as they will be of no account.”

“Yees are right; but the trouble is to find him, as the man said when the British Government condemned John Mitchel, and him thousands of miles away in Ameriky.  This thramping about at night in the mountains isn’t the aisiest way to diskiver a man, and it’s him that will have to find us, instead of we him.  But we’ll keep it up.”

If the Apache mustang which they were riding meditated any mischief, he seemed to be of the opinion that the occasion was not the most suitable.  He walked along with great docility and care, picking his way with a skill that was wonderful.  Several times they approached places where it seemed impossible for an equine to go forward, but the horse scarcely hesitated, toiling onward like an Alpine chamois, until, at last, they drew up in a small valley, through the middle of which ran a small stream, that sparkled brightly in the moonlight.