Already it was growing darker down the gorge. Pike could see that the Apaches had lighted a fire in the road close to the wagons. Evidently they were going to begin some cooking on their own account, and were even now distributing the provisions they had found. Two of them had released Manuelito from the mule, and the poor devil was now seated, bound and helpless, on a rock by the roadside, looking too faint and terrified to live. The captain's field glass revealed a sorry sight to the old soldier's eyes as he peered down at the little throng of savages about the baggage wagon, now completely gutted of its contents; and though he despised the Mexican as a traitor and thief and coward, it was impossible not to feel compassion for him in his present awful plight. There was something most pitiable in the fellow's clasped hands and abject despair. He had lived too long in Arizona not to know the fate reserved for prisoners taken by the Indians, and he knew, and Pike knew, that, their hunger once satisfied, the chances were ten to one they would then turn their attention entirely to their captive, and have a wild and furious revel as they slowly tortured him to death.
[Illustration: THE POOR DEVIL WAS NOW SEATED, BOUND AND HELPLESS, ON A ROCK BY THE ROADSIDE.]
The sun had gone down behind the range, far over to the west, as Pike reached once more the top of his watch-tower, and every moment the darkness deepened down the Pass. Up here he could not only see the baggage wagon in the road, but the top of the ambulance, and two of the horses were also visible, and occasionally the lithe forms of the Tontos scurrying about in the firelight. Evidently the old cook fire in the cleft of the rocks had been stirred up and was now being utilized by half the band, while the others toasted the bacon and roasted _frijoles_ down in the road. The yells had long since ceased. Many of the warriors were squatting about the baggage wagon gnawing at hard bread or other unaccustomed luxuries, but those at the ambulance were chattering like so many monkeys and keeping up a hammering, the object of which Pike could not at first imagine, until he suddenly remembered the locked box under the driver's seat, the key of which was always carried by the captain. Then a flash of hope shot over him as he recalled the fact that when they left their station Captain Gwynne had stowed away in there three or four bottles of whiskey or brandy. It would take them but a little while, he knew, to break into the enclosure, and then there would be a bacchanalian scene.