It was at this juncture that the Irishman determined upon a performance perfectly characteristic and amusing in its originality.  Carefully drawing his knife from his pocket, he managed to cut a switch, some five or six feet in length, the end of which was slightly split.  He next took one of his matches, and struck it against the rock, holding and nursing the flame so far down behind it that not the slightest sign of it could be seen from the outside.  Before the match had cleared itself of the brimstone, Mickey secured the other end of the stick in his hand.  His next proceeding was to raise this stick, move it around in front, and then suddenly extend it at arms length.  This brought the burning match into the dense shadow alongside the rock, and directly over the head of the amazed scout.  The Hibernian character of the act was, that while it revealed to him his man, it also, although in a less degree, betrayed the location of Mickey himself, whose delighted astonishment may be imagined, when, instead of discerning a crouching, painted Apache, he recognized the familiar figure of Sut Simpson, the scout.

“What in thunder are ye driving at?” growled the no less astonished Sut, as the flame was almost brought against his face.  “Do yer take me for a kag of powder, and do ye want to touch me off?”

“No, but I was thinking that that long, red nose of yourn was so full of whiskey that it would burn, and I wanted to make sartin.”

CHAPTER XIX.

HOW IT WAS DONE.

From the very depths of despair, Mickey O’Rooney and Fred Munson were lifted to the most buoyant heights of hope.

“I always took yer for a hoodlum,” growled the scout; “but you’ve just showed yerself a bigger one than I s’posed.  Yer orter fetched a lantern with yer, so as to use nights in walking round the country, and looking for folks.”

“Begorrah, if that isn’t the idaa!” responded the Irishman, with mock enthusiasm; “only I was considering wouldn’t it be as well to call out the name of me friends.  Ye know what a swate voice I have.  When I used to thry and sing in choorch, the ould gintleman always lambasted me for filing the saw on Sunday.  But why don’t ye craap forward and extend me yer paw, as the bear said to the man?”

Sut, however, did not move, but retained his crouching position beside the large boulder, speaking in the lowest and most guarded voice: 

“It won’t do; we haven’t any time to fool away yerabouts.  Is that younker wid yer?”

“Right at me heels, as me uncle concluded when the bulldog nabbed him.”

“Come ahead, then.  Shoot me! but this ain’t a healthy place to loaf in just now.  The ’Paches are too plenty and too close.  We must light out.”

“Sha’n’t I shtrike anither match to light us out by?”

“Hold your tongue, will you?  Creep right along behind me, without making any noise at all, and don’t rise to your feet till yer see me do it, and don’t open your meat-traps to speak till I axes yer a question, if it isn’t till a month from now.  Do yer understand me?”