any Indian attempts to follow our trail; then
I'll come down here as quickly as possible. But keep a bright lookout
yourself. Watch those trees down there to the front. Note everything
occurring along the road as far as you can see. There goes one of the
beggars back to that point now. Even in the midst of their fun they
don't neglect precautions. See! he's going to climb up there on that
little hill just where I was watching this morning. Yes, there he goes.
Now you will see him lie down flat when he gets to the top, and peer
over the rocks to the west. What he is looking out for, I don't know,
but it may be that they expect the cavalry even more than we do. They
possibly have had signal fires from the reservation warning them that
the cavalry have already left the Verde. I hope and pray they have. Now,
keep up your grit, Jim; don't let anything phaze you. If you want help,
or see anything, whistle, and I'll come down."

Already it was growing darker down the gorge. Pike could see that the
Apaches had lighted a fire in the road close to the wagons. Evidently
they were going to begin some cooking on their own account, and were
even now distributing the provisions they had found. Two of them had
released Manuelito from the mule, and the poor devil was now seated,
bound and helpless, on a rock by the roadside, looking too faint and
terrified to live. The captain's field glass revealed a sorry sight to
the old soldier's eyes as he peered down at the little throng of savages
about the baggage wagon, now completely gutted of its contents; and
though he despised the Mexican as a traitor and thief and coward, it was
impossible not to feel compassion for him in his present awful plight.
There was something most pitiable in the fellow's clasped hands and
abject despair. He had lived too long in Arizona not to know the fate
reserved for prisoners taken by the Indians, and he knew, and Pike knew,
that, their hunger once satisfied, the chances were ten to one they
would then turn their attention entirely to their captive, and have a
wild and furious revel as they slowly tortured him to death.

[Illustration: THE POOR DEVIL WAS NOW SEATED, BOUND AND HELPLESS, ON A
ROCK BY THE ROADSIDE.]

The sun had gone down behind the range, far over to the west, as Pike
reached once more the top of his watch-tower, and every moment the
darkness deepened down the Pass. Up here he could not only see the
baggage wagon in the road, but the top of