The Cave in the Mountain / A Sequel to In the Pecos Country

by Edward Sylvester Ellis

The wood was too dense and the ground too uneven to permit him to ride at a faster gait than a walk, but long before the appointed hour was up, he rejoined his friends, who were as surprised as pleased at his prompt reappearance.

“But where are the bastes that ye promised to furnish us?” inquired Mickey, who had very little relish for the prospect of walking any portion of the distance homeward.

“That’s what I’ll have for yer before the sun goes down,” was the confident reply. “I’ll get you one hoss, anyway, which, maybe, is just as good as two, for the weight of the younker don’t make no difference, and we kin git along with one beast better than two.”

“I submit to your suparior judgment,” said the Irishman, deferentially, “and would suggist that the sooner the same quadruped is procured the better all round. I hope the thing won’t be delayed, as me aunt obsarved when the joodge sintenced her husband to be hung.”

Sut explained that his plan was to ride some distance further, to a spot which he had in mind, where they would be safer against being trailed. There, consequently, they could wait with more security while he went for the much-needed horse. Time was precious, and no one realized it more than Sut Simpson. He turned the head of his mustang toward the left, and, after he had started, leaped to the ground and walked ahead, acting the part of a guide for the horse as well as for his friends.

The surface over which they journeyed was of the roughest nature. The fact of it was, the scout was working the party out toward the open prairie, without availing himself of the pass—an undertaking which would have been almost impossible to any one else. At the same time, by picking his way over the rocky surface, and using all means possible to conceal their trail, he hoped to baffle any pursuit that might be attempted.

Lone Wolf was not the redskin to allow such a formidable enemy as Sut Simpson to walk away unmolested, even though he had received an unexpected piece of magnanimity at his hands. He had learned that it was he who had played such havoc among his warriors the day before, who had deceived them by cunningly uttered signals, and had drawn away the redskins sufficiently to permit his two intended victims to walk out of his clutches. It had been a series of unparalleled exploits, the results of which would have exasperated the mildest tempered Indian ever known.

These thoughts were constantly in the mind of the scout as he picked out the path for his equine and human companions. He took unusual pains, for a great deal depended upon his success in hiding the trail as much as possible. Perhaps it is not correct to say that the Apaches could be thrown entirely off the scent, if they should set themselves to work to run the fugitives under cover. None knew this better than Sut himself, but he knew also that the thing could be partially done, and a partial success could be made a perfect one. That is, by adopting all the artifices at his command, the work of trailing could be rendered so difficult that it would be greatly delayed—so that it would require hours for the Apaches to unearth the hiding-place. And Sut meant to accomplish his self-imposed task during those few hours, so as to rejoin his friends, and resume their flight before the sharp-witted pursuers could overhaul them.

The journey, therefore, was made one of the most difficult imaginable. The mustang was unshod, and yet he clambered up steep places, and over rocks, and through gravelly gullies, where the ordinary horse would have been powerless. The animal seemed to enter into the spirit of the occasion and his performances again and again excited the wonder and admiration of Mickey and Fred. The creature had undergone the severest kind of training at the hands of an unsurpassed veteran of the frontier.

This laborious journeying continued for a couple of hours, during which it seemed to the man and lad that they passed over several miles of the roughest traveling they had ever witnessed. The mustang had fallen several times, but he sprang up again like a dog and showed no signs of injury or fatigue. Finally Sut made a halt, just as Mickey was on the point of protesting, and, turning about, so as to face his companions, he smiled in his peculiar way as he spoke.