'So you are awake, Seth?'

'Yes,' said I. 'Are you all right now, Rube?'

'As right as can be,' Rube said in his ordinary cheerful tone; 'except that I feel as if a fellow was sawing away at my ankles and wrists with a blunt knife.'

'That's about the state of my wrists,' I said.

'I don't mind my wrists so much,' he said; 'it's my feet bothers me. I shall be such a time before I can walk.'

'You needn't bother about that, Rube,' said I. 'It isn't much more walking your feet have got to do.'

'I hope they've got more to do than they've ever done yet, old hoss,' Rube said; 'at any rate, they've got a good thirty miles to do to-night.'

'Are you in earnest, Rube?' said I.

'Never more so,' said he. 'All we've got to do is to get away, and then tramp it.'

'How do you mean to get away, Rube?'

'Easy enough,' Rube said carelessly. 'Get our hands loose first, then our legs, then kill them fellows and make tracks.'

Now it ain't very often that I larf out. I don't suppose I've larfed right out three times since I was a boy; but Rube's coolness tickled me so that I larfed out like a hyena. When I began, Rube he began; and when he larfed it was tremendous. I don't think Rube knew what I war larfin' at; but he told me afterward he larfed to see me larf, which, in all the time we had been together, he hadn't seen. What made us larf worse was that the Mexicans were so startled that they seized their rifles and rushed to the doorway, and stood looking at us as if we were wild beasts. Keeping the guns pointed at us, they walked round very carefully, and felt our cords to see that they were all right; and finding they were, went back into the next room, savage and rather scared. Our larfing made them terribly uneasy, I could see; and they had an idea we couldn't have larfed like that if we hadn't some idea of getting away. When we had done I said: