He picked up a round pebble and put it into his mouth. Jimmie did the same. A pebble in the mouth made the mouth wet.
“Listen!” bade Jimmie. “I hear tinkle!”
“Yes; pack-mules. The soldiers are coming. You can go with them, Cheemie, but you must not say one word about me. Promise.”
“All right, Micky.”
The bells of the pack-mules were yet a long way off. Micky, with the weeds still bound on his head, cautiously rose, to peer over the two boulders—and down he dropped.
“S-s-s! Tonto!” he whispered.
He began to poke out his head, gradually, around a corner of the rock on his side. Jimmie gently wriggled, crawling flat, until he was under an over-hang on his side, and might see straight before, with his head just raised from the ground. Right up over the edge of the mighty basin figures were popping, and scuttling for the timber: a file of them, Apaches!
They crossed not more than thirty yards away. They were naked of body and limbs, their hair was black and long and straggly, they were daubed with deer blood and mescal juice, they carried strung bows and quivers, they were the fiercest, most hideous Apaches that Jimmie had ever seen.
The low sun shone full against them, showing them plainly. They scarcely glanced aside as they hurried; and if they did chance to note Micky’s head or Jimmie’s head, they thought them to be two motionless tufts of weed, like other tufts growing here and there.
Tontos! Jimmie counted seventeen, all springing out of the depths of the earth as suddenly as jacks-in-the-box, darting across, and in among the pines. Then there were two more, who dropped among the rocks under the trees.