"Do ye hear anything?" asked Mickey, bending his head to listen.

They were silent a few minutes, during which the occasional tramp of a
horse's hoof was noted. Beyond a doubt, the entire war-party of Apaches
were at the mouth of the fissure and probably a number had already entered
it.

"They haven't tried to rush in pell-mell, head-over-heels," added Mickey,
after they had stood thus a short time; but they are sneaking along, just
as they always do when they're on the thrack of a gintleman."

"How soon do you think they will be here?" asked Fred, who had recovered
his breath, and who began to feel something like a renewal of hope, faint
though it might be, at the continued silence of their foes.

"Can't say, me laddy; but they may come any minute, and we must keep eyes
and ears open, and be ready to do the last act in style. Don't ye mind
that we're very much in the same fix that we was when cotched in the cave,
barring that we're worse off here than we were there? If some one should
let a lasso down from the top, we might climb up just as we did there; but
that's one of the things that ain't likely to happen."

"Suppose we creep back a ways to see what the Indians are doing," ventured
Fred, who was puzzled at the silence of their enemies, which had now
continued for some time.

"No need of doing that just yet. They'll let us know what they're at and
what they mane--whisht!"