“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 pass, 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 pass.

It will be remembered that the pass 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 passed 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 passed 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.