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The horses, too, delighted the Tontos, and, as Pike said, they would doubtless be occupied some little time with the division of the spoils, and longer in having a grand feast. Looking down the road he could see the two mules browsing peacefully side by side, Manuelito still lashed to the back of one of them.

Galloping away on Pike's horse in close pursuit, as he supposed, of Manuelito and the mules, the captain had turned south the moment he cleared the rocky buttresses that formed the western gateway to the Pass.

Manuelito had slunk down by the fire, and not a sound was to be heard except Jim's musical snore, and a little cropping noise among the horses. Yet Pike's quick ear caught, far out on the prairie to the west, the sound of hoofs coming towards him. "When those Apaches named a horse 'click-click' they must have struck one that interfered," he muttered.

I warned Don Juan to have a care, as I knew the cunning of the Navajo tribe, having dealt with them before, and advised him to play the traps he had bought from them with liquor against a chipper little squaw who was richly dressed and had come with Chief Manuelito, mounted on a white pony. I believed her to be the chief's daughter.

He could no longer see Manuelito or the mules, but suddenly he heard a sound of a simultaneous rush and an instant after with hideous shouts and yells the whole band leaped into view and went tearing down into the road and up to the rocks where their helpless prisoner still sat bound and helpless more dead than alive and Pike heard the shriek of despair with which the poor fellow greeted his now half crazy captors.

"This is little Manuel, my sweet little Manuelito," she answered in a low voice, and buried her face in the child's black curls that she might not have to look at Wilhelm. She covered little Manuelito with kisses, and then pushed him gently over to Wilhelm, in whom the most conflicting emotions were struggling for the mastery.

Before starting, however, he called up Jim and gave him his instructions: "You see that the sun is almost down. The chances are that they will be so much interested in what they have found that darkness will settle down upon us before they fairly get through with their jubilee. Then, again, it may be that the bloody hounds will have some fun of their own with poor Manuelito to-night.

"Ah, Manuelito mio, I dreamed many dreams of rescuing you as we marched through this country, but I never believed they would be realized," he said. "But the little Enrique acted, and I am here," laughed Manuel. "And Frank acted, too," said I, "as you shall soon hear; and you will learn that it took both boys to effect your rescue."

He reasoned that the four-footed creatures that he took to be the mules were in all probability a portion of the pack-train of the troop that had so recently passed along, or it might be one or two troopers who had been making scouts to the right or to the left of the trail, and were now following the main body. All thought of pursuing Manuelito further was abandoned.

Manuelito with the mules in rear had listened to Sieber's warning with undisguised dismay. Only Pike ex-corporal of the captain's troop rode unconcernedly ahead. What cared he for Apaches? He had fought them time and again. Nevertheless when Captain Gwynne came cantering out to the front and joined his old non-commissioned officer, it was with some surprise that he listened to Pike's salutation.