“Would you try and shoot them if you had the chance?”

“Not just yet, for it would show ’em where we are, and they would be likely to bother us.”

The two carried out this policy of keeping their precise location from the Indians so long as it was possible, which would have been a very short time, but for the terror inspired among the Apaches from the shots across the pass.  Mickey had no suspicion that Lone Wolf and his best warriors were absent on a hunt for the annoying cause of these shots.  Had he known it, he might have been tempted upon a reconnoissance of his own before sunset, and so it was well, perhaps, that he remained in ignorance.

Within the next hour night descended, and the ravine, excluding the rays of the moon, became so dark that Mickey believed it safe to venture out of their niche and approach the pass, into which they had no idea of entering until the ground had been thoroughly reconnoitered.

“The spalpeens will be listening,” whispered Mickey, as they crept out, “and so ye naadn’t indulge in any whistling, or hurrahing, or dancing jigs on the way to our destination.”

Fred appreciated their common peril too well to allow any betrayal through his remissness.  Favored by the darkness, they crept carefully along over the rocks and boulders, and through the vines and vegetation, until they were so close that the man halted.

“Do ye mind and kaap as still as a dead man, for we’re so close now that it won’t do to go any closer till we know what the spalpeens are doing.”

The two occupied this position for some time, during which nothing caught their ears to betray the presence of men or animals.  Feeling the great value of time, Mickey was on the point of creeping forth, when he became aware that there was somebody moving near him.  The sound was very slight, but the proof was all the more positive on that account; for it is only by such means that the professional scout judges of the proceedings of a foe near him.

His first dread was that the individual was in the rear, having entered the fissure while they were at the opposite end, and then allowed them to pass by him.  But when the faint rustling caught his ear again there could be no doubt that it was in front of him.

“One of the spalpeens—­and maybe Lone Wolf himself—­coming in to larn about our health,” was his conclusion, though the situation was too critical to allow him to communicate with the lad behind him.

Reaching his hand back, he touched his arm, as a warning for the most perfect silence.

The boulder against which he was partly resting was no more quiet and motionless than Fred, who had nerved himself to meet the worst or best fortune.  A few minutes more listening satisfied Mickey that the redskin was not a dozen feet in front, and that a particularly large boulder, which was partly revealed by some stray moonlight that made its way through the limbs and branches, was sheltering the scout.  Not only that, but he became convinced that the Indian was moving around the left side of the rock, hugging it and keeping so close to the ground that the faintest shadowy resemblance of a human figure could not be detected.