.

WHAT THE FOOTSTEPS MEANT.
Careful listening convinced Fred that there were two red-skins groping around in the darkness.

After making himself certain on that point, he reached his hand over, and, grasping the muscular arm of Mickey O'Rooney, shook his companion quite vigorously.
Fred was afraid that, in waking, the Irishman would utter some exclamation, or make such a noise that he would betray their location.
When, therefore, several shakings failed to arouse him, the boy easily persuaded himself that it was best to leave him where he was for a time.
"I can tell when they come too close," he reflected, "and then I will stir him up." A few minutes later he found that he could hear the noise without placing his ear against the blanket; so he lay flat on his face, resting the upper part of his body upon his elbows, with his head thrown up.

He peered off in the gloom, in the direction whence the footsteps seemed to come, looking with that earnest, piercing gaze, as if he expected to see the forms of the dreaded Apaches become luminous and reveal themselves in the black night around.
No ray of light relieved the Egyptian blackness.

The camp-fire had been allowed to die out completely, and no red ember, glowering like a demon's eye, showed where it had been.