In the Pecos Country Part 17

As the volumes of smoke issuing from his mouth showed that the flame had done its duty, he held the match aloft, and looked down in the smiling, upturned face of the lad, scrutinizing the handsome countenance, as long as the tiny bit of pine held out.

"Yes, it's your own lovely self, as Barney McDougan's wife obsarved, when he came home drunk, with one eye punched out and his head cracked.

Do ye know that while I was surveying your swate face I saw something behind ye?"

"No. What was it?" demanded Fred, with a start and shudder, looking back in the darkness.

"Oh! it was nothing that will harm ye: I think there be some bits of wood there that kin be availed of in the way of kindling a fire, and that's what I misses more than anything else, as me mither used to say when she couldn't find the whisky-bottle. Bestir yourself, me laddy, and a.s.sist me in getting together some sc.r.a.ps."

The Irishman was not mistaken in his supposition. Groping around, they found quite a quant.i.ty of sticks and bits of wood. All of these were dry, and the best kind of kindling stuff that could be obtained. Mickey was never without his knife, and he whittled several of these until sure they would take the flame from a match when he made the essay.

The fire caught readily, and, carefully nursed, it spread until it roared and crackled like an old-fas.h.i.+oned camp-fire. As it rose higher and higher, and the heavy gloom was penetrated and lit up by the vivifying rays, Mickey and Fred used their eyes to the best of their ability.

The cave seemed to stretch away into fathomless darkness in every direction, excepting one, which was toward the waterfall or cascade.

This appeared to be at one side, instead of running through the centre.

The dark walls could be seen on the other side of the stream, and the gleam and glitter of the water, for some distance both above and below the plunge.

"Do you obsarve anything new?" asked Mickey.

"Nothing more than what I told you," replied Fred, supposing he referred to the extent of the cavern.

"I have larned something," said the man, significantly.

"What's that?"

"Somebody's been here ahead of us."

"How do you know that?"

"I've got the proof. Will you note that, right there before your eyes?"

As he spoke, he pointed to the kindling-wood, or fuel, of which they had collected considerable, while there was plenty more visible around them. Fred was not sure that he understood him, so he still looked questioningly toward him.

"Wood doesn't grow in such places as this, no more than ye can find praties sprouting out of the side of a tea kettle; but then it might have been pitched down the hole above, or got drifted into it without anybody helping, if it wasn't for the fact that there's been a camp-fire here before."

"How do you make that out, Mickey?"

The Irishman stooped down and picked up one of the pieces of wood, which was waiting to be thrown upon the camp fire. Holding it out, he showed that the end was charred.

"That isn't the only stick that's built after the same shtyle, showing that this isn't the first camp-fire that was got up in these parts.

There's been gintlemen here before to-day, and they must have had some way of coming and going that we haven't diskivered as yet."

There seemed nothing unlikely in this supposition of Mickey's, who picked up his rifle from where he had left it lying on the ground, and stared inquiringly around in the gloom.

"I wonder whether there be any wild animals prowling around?"

"I don't think that could be; for there couldn't many of them fall through that hole that let us in, and if they did, they would soon die."

"That minds me that you hinted something about feeling the cravings of hunger, and I signified to you that I had something for ye about my clothes; and so I have, if it isn't lost."

As he spoke, he drew from beneath his waistcoat a package, carefully wrapped about with an ordinary newspaper. Gently drawing the covering aside, he displayed a half-dozen pieces of deer-meat, cooked to a turn.

"Will ye take some?" he asked, handing one to Fred, who could scarcely conceal his craving eagerness, as he began masticating it.

"How comes it that you have that by you?"

"I ginerally goes prepared for the most desprit emargencies, as me mither used to remark when she stowed the whisky-bottle away wid the lunch she was takin' with her. It was about the middle of yisterday afternoon that I fetched down a deer that was browsing on the bank of a small stream that I raiched, and, as a matter of coorse, I made my dinner on him. I tried to lay in enough stock to last me for a week--that is, under my waistband--but I hadn't the room; so I sliced up several pieces, rather overcooked 'em, so as to make 'em handy to carry, and then wrapped 'em up in the paper."

"It's a common-sense arrangement," added Mickey. "I had the time and the chance to do it, and it was likely to happen that, when I wanted the next meal, I wouldn't have the same opportunity, remembering which I did as I said, and the result is, I've brought _your_ dinner to you."

CHAPTER XXVII. A SUBTERRANEAN CAMP-FIRE

There is no sauce like hunger, and after Fred Munson's experience of partial starvation, and nausea from the wild berries which he had eaten, the venison was as luscious as could be. It seemed to him that he had never tasted of anything he could compare to it.

"Fred, me laddy, tell me all that has happened to you since we met--not that, aither, but since Lone Wolf snapped you up on his mustang, and ran away wid you. I wasn't about the city when the Apaches made their call, being off on a hunt, as you will remember, so I didn't see all the sport, but I heard the same from Misther Simpson."

Thus invited, the boy went over the narration, already known, giving the full particulars of his adventures, from the morning he opened his eyes and found himself in the camp of the Apaches in the mountains; to the hour when he slipped through from the upper earth into the cave below.

Mickey listened with great interest, frequently interrupting and expressing his surprise and grat.i.tude at the good fortune which seemed to succeed bad fortune in every case.

"You sometimes read of laddies like you gettin out of the claws of these spalpeens, but you don't often see it, though you've been lucky enough to get out."

"Now, Mickey, tell me how it was that you came to get on my track."

"Well, you see, I got back to New Bosting shortly after the rumpus. I would have been in time enough to have had a hand in the wind-up, if it hadn't been that I got into a little circus of my own. Me and a couple of Apaches tried the game of cracking each other's heads, that was spun out longer than we meant, and so, as I was obsarving, when I rode into town, the fun was all over. I found Misther Simpson just gettin' ready to take your trail, and he axed me to do the same, and I was mighty glad to do it. I was desirous of bringing along your horse Hurricane, for you to ride when we should get you, but Soot would n't hear of it. He said the horse would only be a bother, and if we should lay hands onto you, either of our horses was strong enough to take you, so we left the crature behind."

"Did you have any trouble in following us?"

"Not at first; a hundred red spalpeens riding over the prairie can't any more hide their trail than an Irishman can save himself from cracking a head when he is invited to do so. We galloped along, without ever scarcely looking at the ground. You know I've larned something of the perarie business since we came West, and that was the kind of trail I could have follered wid both eyes shut and me hands handcuffed, and, knowing as we naaded to hurry, we put our mustangs to their best paces."

"How was it that you didn't overtake us?"

"You had too much of a start; but when we struck the camp in the mountains--that is, where Lone Wolf and his spalpeens took their breakfast--we wasn't a great way behind 'em. We swung along at a good pace, Soot trying to time ourselves so that we'd strike 'em 'bout dark, when he ca'c'lated there'd be a good chance to work in on 'em."

"How was it you failed?'

"We'd worked that thing as nice as anything you ever heard tell on, if Lone Wolf hadn't played a trick on us. We had n't gone far on the trail among the mountains, when we found that the spalpeens had separated into two parties--three in one, and something like a hundred in the other."

"And you did not know which had charge of me?"

"There couldn't be any sartinty about it, and the best we could do was to make a guess. Soot got off his mustang and crawled round on his hands and knees, running his fingers over the ground, and looking down as careful like as me mither used to do with my head when she obsarved me scratching it more industrious than usual. He did n't say much, and arter a time he came back to where his mustang was waitin', and, leanin'

agin the beast, looked up in my face, and axed me which party I thought you was in. I said the thray, of course, and that was the rason why they had gone off by themselves."

"You were right, then, of course."

"Yes, and when I answered, Soot, he just laughed kind o' soft like, and said that that was the very rason why he did not believe you was with the thray. He remarked that Lone Wolf was a mighty sharp old spalpeen.

He knowed that Soot would be coming on his trail, and he divided up his party so as to bother him. Anybody would be apt to think just the same as I did--that the boy would be sent to the Injun town in charge of the little party, while the others went on to hatch up some deviltry. Lone Wolf knowed enough to do that, and he had therefore kept the laddy with the big company, meaning that his old friend, the scout, should go on a fool's errand.

"That's the way Soot rasoned, you see, and that's where he missed it altogether. He wasn't ready for both of us to take the one trail, so it was agreed that we should also divide into two parties--he going after the big company and I after the small one, he figuring out that, by so doing, he would get all the heavy work to do, and I would n't any, and there is where he missed it bad. There wasn't any way that we could fix it so that we could come together again, so the understanding was that each was to go on his own hook, and get back to New Bosting the best way we could, and if there was n't any New Bosting to go to, why, we was to keep on till we reached Fort Severn, which, you know is about fifty miles beyant.