He found the sticks just as he had thrown them down and he proceeded to regather them, keeping a careful watch for another dangerous visitor.  All remained quiet, however, and, making his way down the wooded slope into the open area, he looked back and found that he was still alone.  So it continued until he returned to where the two mustangs were tethered.  There he carefully adjusted the sticks and prepared everything, after which he began to feel some impatience at the non-appearance of his friend.

“He must see more fun in that kind of thing than I do.  There’s no telling what has become of those six Apaches we left down in the cave.  I feel sure that they’ve got above ground again.  It won’t take long for them to find their mustangs, or some other horses, and they may be a mile away, and there may be other parties close by.  Halloa!”

Fred thought that he had no matches about his person; but he was making a sort of aimless hunt when he found a solitary lucifer at the bottom of his pocket.  This he carefully struck against the rock behind him, and in a few minutes the camp-fire was started and burning merrily.

As he sat down to wait he looked toward the point where the Irishman had vanished from sight.  There he was, bearing on his shoulders some choice sections of a young antelope he had shot, although Fred recalled that he had not heard the report of his gun, except when the grizzly was shot.  As Mickey came along over the same path taken by the boy, he was forced to make a detour around the carcass of the bear.  He paused to survey it, his whole manner betraying great astonishment, as if he had never beheld anything of the kind.  He walked around the body several times, punched it with his foot, and finally, grasping his twenty pounds of meat in his right hand, approached the camp-fire.

Here he at once began the preparations for broiling it.  The antelope had been of goodly size and he had cut out the most luscious portions, so as to avoid carrying back any waste material.  He had a great deal more than both could eat, it is true, but it was a commendable custom with the Irishman to lay in a stock against emergencies that were likely to arise.

While thus employed, it would have been impossible for Mickey to hold his tongue.

“Begorrah, but it was queer, was the same, the way I came to cotch this gintleman.  I hunted him a little ways, when he made a big jump, and I thought had got a long ways off, but when I came to folly him, I found he had cornered himself among the rocks, where there was no show of getting out, except by coming back on me.  The minute I showed mesilf, he made a rush for me arms, just as all the purty gals in Tipperary used to do when I came along the street.  An antelope can’t do much, but I don’t care about their coming down on me in that style, and so I pulled up and let drive.  He was right on me when I pulled trigger, and he made one big jump that carried him clear over my head, and landed him stone dead on the other side.”