red: "Look! Look!"

Following with his eyes the direction indicated by Jim's hand, Pike
could just see, probably two hundred or two hundred and fifty yards away
down the hillside, something dirty white in color, very slowly and very
stealthily creeping from one bowlder to another. The tops and crests of
the trees and bowlders, as has been said, were tinged by the light of
the fires still burning down in the roadway. The Indian yells were
gradually ceasing as, one after another, seemingly overcome by the
liquor that they had been drinking, they subsided into silence. A number
of them, however, still kept up their monotonous dance, varied every now
and then by a yell of triumph; but the uproar and racket was not to be
compared with what had been going on during the torture to which
Manuelito had been subjected before they had mercifully, though most
horribly, put an end to his sufferings.

Nothing but the embers of the wagon and the unconsumed iron work, of
course, now remained in the road. Pike judged too that the ambulance had
been burned, and that nothing remained of that. But all thought as to
what was going on among the Indians in the Pass was now of little
account as compared with the immediate presence of this object below
him. Could it be one of the Apaches? Could it be the sentinel from the
other side? Its stealthy movements and the noiseless way in which it
seemed to flit from rock to rock gave color to his supposition, and yet
it appeared unnatural to Pike that any one of the Indians should
separate himself from his comrades and go on a still hunt in the dead of
the night for traces of their hated foes.

"I cannot see it now," whispered Jim. "Where is he gone?"

"Behind that big rock that you see touched by the firelight down yonder.
Our trail is just about half way. Look! There it is again! Nearer, too,
by fifty yards. I wish he'd get on top of one of those bowlders where
the light would strike him. Then we might make him out. By Jove! He's
coming up the hill. Whatever you do, don't fire. I'll tend to him."

With straining eyes they watched the strange, stealthy approach of the
mysterious object. Every now and then it would totally disappear from
sight and then, a moment or two afterwards, could again be dimly seen,
crouching along beside some big rock or emerging behind the thick
branches of some stunted tree. Nearer it came until Pike was sure it
must have reached the "trail" they had made in their journ