He wished to escape
from it.

They crossed the thicket and came up against the mountain wall.
But it was not quite so steep as it had looked in the distance,
and in the faint light Dick saw the trace of a trail leading up
the slope among the pines. It was not the trail of human beings,
merely a faint path indicating that wild animals, perhaps
cougars, had passed that way.

"How are you feeling, Al?" he asked, repeating his anxious query.

"Better. My strength has come back," replied his brother.

"Then we'll go up the mountain. We must get as far away as we
can from those fiends, the Sioux. Thank God, Al, we're spared
together!"

Each boy felt a moment of devout thankfulness. They had not
fallen, and they were there together! Each also thought of the
singular message that Bright Sun had given to them, but neither
spoke of it.

They climbed for more than half an hour in silence, save for an
occasional whisper. The bushes helped Albert greatly. He pulled
himself along by means of them, and now and then the two boys
stopped that he might rest. He was still excited under the
influence of the night, the distant battle, and their peril, and
he breathed in short gasps, but did not faint again. Dick thrust
his arm at intervals under his brother's and helped him in the
ascent.

After climbing a quarter of an hour, they stopped longer than
usual and looked down at the pass, which Dick reckoned should be
almost beneath them. They heard the faint sound of a shot, saw a
tiny beam of red appear, then disappear, and after that there was
only silence and blank darkness.

"It's all over now," whispered Albert, and it was a whisper not
of caution, but of awe.

"Yes, it's all over," Dick said in the same tone. "It's likely,
Al, that you and I alone out of all that train are alive. Conway
and all the others are gone."

"Except Bright Sun," said Albert.

The two boys looked at each other again, but said nothing. They
then resumed their climbing, finding it easier this time. They
reached a height at which the undergrowth ceased, but the pines,
growing almost in ordered rows, stretched onward and upward.

Dick sent occasional glances toward the pass, but the darkness
there remained unbroken. Every time he turned his eyes that way
he seemed to be looking into a black well of terror.

Both Dick and Albert, after the first hour of ascent, had a
feeling of complete safety. The Sioux, occupied with their grea