He waited, and watched, and hoped, as the hours passed by, until he began to believe that something serious had happened to him. At intervals he repeated his signals, but on no occasion was there anything like a response.
It was an odd juxtaposition of events that, at the very moment he uttered some of the calls, the despairing kid was doing the same thing, and, although each strained his ears to the utmost, yet neither suspected the truth.
The hours and the time passed on, until happening to look up at the opening, Mickey saw the prepared blanket slowly descending, just as Fred looked upon it from the ridge.
“I’m obliged to yees,” he said, in an undertone, “but I don’t find myself in pressing naad of the same. I have one here, but if ye insist on my taking that, I’ll not quarrel with yees.”
He resolved that when it came down within his reach he would cut the lasso, and take it, but before it reached the ground he had changed his mind.
He knew what the intention of the Apaches was, but he was not deceived for an instant.
“I’ll not do anything at all,” he muttered; “I’ll not interfere, where it’s so difficult to decide upon me duty, as the owld lady obsarved when the bear got her husband down. I’ll let ’em think I’m aslaap, and see what they’ll do.”
And thus, as the reader already knows, the rolled-up blanket was lowered and raised again without molestation, almost grazing the upturned face of the Irishman as it did so.
“And the next will be one of the spalpeens himself. Begorrah! there he is this minute!”
Just as he anticipated, a short time after the blanket began its descent, enfolding the form of one of the swarthy warriors, the Irishman at once detecting the ruse.