There was a very excellent reason why the old Spanish-Mexican settler had chosen that exact spot for the Santa Lucia ranch. It was the little spring which bubbled up in the middle of the courtyard around three sides of which the adobe was constructed. It had been dug out to a depth of several feet and walled in. It had never been known to fail, and it always had enough water left, after supplying the household, to furnish a tiny rill which ran away at one side of the gate in the palisades of the fourth side. This rill was planked over until it got away from the ranch, but it ran out into the sunshine then, and travelled gayly on to the corral. Here it found a number of acres of land, surrounded by a strong wire fence. It also found a long hollow to fill up with water, so that cattle and horses corralled there had plenty to drink. Except in the winter and spring there was little ever heard of that rill beyond the corral, and, if shrubbery had at any time grown upon its margin, it had long since been browsed away, for there was none there now.
Beyond the corral were great reaches of maize, and there had this year been no drought to hurt it. A wide patch of potatoes and some oats seemed to be the only other attempt at anything more thancattle-farming, and things generally had the bare, camplike look common to New Mexican ranches.
Shortly after breakfast, on the morning after the arrival of the tilted wagon, Mrs. Evans and Vic walked out on what appeared to be a tour of inspection. They had not slept well, and there was just a little touch of feverishness in the way they talked about Cal and his father, but they were trying hard to be cheerful.
"No, Vic," said Mrs. Evans, "it won't pay to put in any of the seeds now, but I'm glad they've come, and I don't believe they will spoil. The grape-roots and cuttings won't get here till autumn, but we'll have the vineyard planted over there."
"Is there really to be a barn, mother?" asked Vic, doubtfully, as if such an ornament as that were almost out of the question.
"Yes, my dear. Your father loses stock enough, every year, to pay for more shelter, and for keeping hay, and for all sorts of improvements."
"To think of a vineyard and grapes!"
"And fruit-trees, Vic. The brook is to be fenced in up to the corral and lined with trees. It won't dry up so easily when it's shaded, and the corral is to be a little farther away. It all costs money, though. So does fencing."
They were dreaming dreams of the future and of what could be done to turn Santa Lucia into a sort of New Mexican Eden. The stockade itself was to be clambered over by vines, and so was the veranda, and trees were to be coaxed to grow in all directions. Bushes and plants that could stand the summer heats were to be planted all around the ranch. The oldadobe itself was to be fixed up. It was a very pleasant way of spending a morning, but it had its unpleasant thought.
"Vic," said her mother, "there are a great many things that your father can't afford to do, if he is to lose all those horses."
"He has plenty left, and the cattle."
"Yes, but the Indians took away some of his best stock."
"The Indians wouldn't be so likely to come," said Vic, "if everything looked more settled."
It seemed so, and there was truth in it, only the whole truth required more houses near by, and more men to defend them.
As the talk turned towards the Apaches and their deeds, the dream of vines and shrubbery and flowers, of barns and stables, dairy, trees, and all faded away, and they walked back into the house, wondering anxiously what would be the next news from those who had gone in search of the stolen horses and the Apache horse-thieves.
Mrs. Evans and Vic were not one bit more completely in the dark, that morning, than were Colonel Romero and his lancers and his rancheros. They had succeeded, the day before, in following the ancient trail until it brought them to grass and water and a good camping-ground. It had not shown them, however, one track or trace which seemed to have been made in modern times. If Kah-go-mish and his band had come that way, they had managed to conceal the fact remarkably well. Once more it was easy for the brave colonel and his officers to see their duty without any argument. They could notgo any farther, if they would, until the arrival of the pack-mules and the lead horses. They could not go in any direction until they knew which way the Apaches had gone. Therefore they must rest in that camp, and send out scouts and trailers, and wait for the loads of supplies and for information. Their puzzle was ended for that day, at least, and there were trees in abundance to lie down under and take it easy.
The men in the bivouac, at Cold Spring, were astir as soon as the daylight began to come the next morning. Colonel Evans was the first man upon his feet.
"I'll find him," he said, "if I have to search the chaparral inch by inch. Poor boy! What a day and night he must have had! No food, no water, no hope! Lost in the chaparral!"
It was a dreadful thing to think of, and the next worst idea was that he might have been killed by the Apaches. Everybody in camp took a deep interest in the proposed search, and all who were to join in it were willing to set out before the heat of the day should come. Captain Moore had a number of cautious things to say about the danger from Indians and ambuscades, but he evidently believed, after all, that Kah-go-mish had gone away.
"He won't run any useless risk of losing horses," said the captain. "I think, on the whole, we can search away."
The Mexicans who had been in charge of the lost pack-train ate their breakfasts in a hurry. The day's journey before them seemed dismal enough, for they were to cross the desert on foot to report the workof Kah-go-mish. They were given a supply of provisions, but there were no horses or arms for them.
"You won't meet any red-skins," said Sam Herrick to a very melancholy ranchero. "They've all gone the other way. You can make better time on foot than you could a-driving a pack-mule. You'll git thar. Give the colonel my compliments and tell him that old Kah-go-mish ort to just love him. I never heard of a train given away for nothing before."
The ranchero nodded a sullen agreement with Sam, but he was not likely to give the message accurately to Colonel Romero.
The poor fellows started at once, with a plain enough trail to follow, and Sam looked kindly after them.
"They're in luck," he said. "They've nothing to do but to walk. Not even a mule to lead or a fence to climb. Colorado! But didn't old Kah-go-mish make a clean sweep."
"Left their skelps on 'em," said Bill.
"That was just cunning," replied Sam. "Some redskins haven't sense enough to let a skelp alone, but he has."
Only a little later the sentries and pickets posted by Captain Moore were all the human beings left in the camp at Cold Spring. They, too, were hidden among the bushes, and the proof that it was a camp at all consisted of three sacks of corn, a saddle, some camp-kettles and coffee-pots, and the smouldering camp-fires.
The bugles began to send their music out over the spider-web wilderness of the chaparral west of thespring, and Captain Moore declared, hopefully, that if Cal were anywhere in all that range he would be sure of hearing music before noon.
The trouble was that he was so many long, tiresome miles beyond the reach of the loudest bugle, and that he had heard music of an altogether different sort before the very earliest riser among them had opened his eyes.
The northern edge of Mexico was marked deeply by the surveyor's chisel upon the quartz rock at Cold Spring. All the country north and south of it had once been Apache land. Away back, nobody knows how long, before any Apaches had ever drank of that water, the entire region had belonged to another race of people, who disappeared, but left traces behind them, here and there. They did not leave any written history.
There are men who hold an opinion that the deserts of the southwest, such as Cal Evans made his gloomy march through that night, were not always desert. To Cal himself, as he rode along, the waste around him had seemed utterly hopeless, as if nothing good ever had been there or ever could be.
After the desert was passed, and after the whoop which announced the finding of water, he and his grim guard rode on until the forest around them became so dark that they and all others were compelled to halt. It was only for a few minutes, and then from the head of the cavalcade came back braves and squaws and boys carrying blazing torches of resinous wood. The huge tree-trunks that Cal now rode among seemed positively gigantic. No axe had been at work in that place for an age, andthere was only a moderate amount of underbrush. What bushes could be seen were mostly gathered around and over the decaying trunks of fallen trees, and it was easy for the train to pick its winding way.
Before long Cal saw ahead of him great gleams of light, for the Apaches were kindling camp-fires, and there was an abundance of dry branches to make swift blazes.
The next thing of particular interest to him was a portly-looking squaw, who wore a somewhat battered straw bonnet, very much mixed up with gay ribbons. She seemed to be looking for somebody, and she carried in one hand a large water-gourd and in the other a flaming torch.
"Ugh!" she said, as she came to the side of Cal's pony. "Boy heap dry. Want water?"
"Thank you! Thank you!" exclaimed Cal, as he reached out for the gourd, and his voice sounded as if he had a bad cold in his head.
It was not a cold by any means, but a sort of fever, as if a sandy desert were beginning to form inside of him. He drank and drank again, and then passed the gourd to the lean Apache beside him.
"Ugh!" was all the immediate response to his politeness, but something said to Wah-wah-o-be in Apache brought back a rapidly spoken and seemingly resentful response. The chief's wife was plainly not at all afraid of that warrior.
"Boy eat, by and by," she said to Cal, as he handed her back the gourd, and he was encouraged to ask her a question.
"Do you know what they have done with mypony?" he said. "I want him to have some but not too much, right away."
"Ugh!" she said. "Heap pony!" for she had taken more than one look at a horse which she declared to be the right kind of a mount for The-boy-whose-ear-pushed-away-a-piece-of-lead. Cal repeated his question in Spanish before he was understood, and Wah-wah-o-be promised care for Dick. She did not add, however, that the care was to be given on account of the absent Ping.
The red mustang had a right to consider that he had been a patient pony, under trying circumstances, but his relief came at last. A fat squaw came to him, followed by a boy a little older than Cal and not resembling him in any way, and they unhitched Dick from his place in the train. They led him on among the trees until they came to the edge of a small, slowly running stream of water, and here they let him drink about a quarter as much as Dick thought would be good for him.
"No kill him," said Wah-wah-o-be. "Pony eat a heap. Drink more then."
Dick was led on after that until he came to a grassy open, where the moonlight showed him a large number of quadrupeds of various ranks in life. All were picketed at lariat-ends, but some of them had lain down at once, while others, in better spirits, had begun to nibble the grass. Dick was also picketed, and he tried the grass for a while. Then he concluded that he had done enough for one day and night, and he, too, lay down, but he would have been all the more comfortable for a few words from his master and a good rubbing down.
Cal's uncertainty as to what was to become of him was not at all relieved by his next experiences. To be sure he was guided onward to a place under the trees, not far from one of the camp-fires, and was ordered to dismount. More water was brought to him and a liberal piece of broiled venison. He ate well, now, but all the soreness at his heart seemed to have worked out into his muscles. He was dreadfully weary. He felt too badly to care a copper when he saw his saddle and bridle taken from the pony he had ridden. They were carried away by the fat squaw who had brought him the water. He had caught her name of Wah-wah-o-be from her own remarks, but he did not catch the other name she uttered, with a motherly chuckle, when she took possession of the saddle and bridle. It was a very long name, and was accompanied by expressions of strong admiration for the boy it belonged to. The one thing which Cal clearly comprehended was, that if he was ever to ride again he would probably mount some other steed than Dick and hold some other bridle.
His head was too weary and too busy to take much note of things around him then, but he afterwards remembered how wonderful it all looked. The scattered camp-fires were surrounded by wild, strange-looking figures, and by groups that were the wilder and the stranger the more figures there were in them. The firelight danced among the giant trees and through the long vines which clung to them or hung from their branches. The great shadows seemed to make motions to each other, now and then, and it was altogether a very remarkable picture.
Cal was beginning to feel sleepy, when out from among the shadows marched the chief in the cocked hat and red stocking-leg uniform, followed by four other dignified warriors.
"Ugh!" he said. "How boy now? Eat heap?"
"Yes, thank you," said Cal. "How?"
"Ugh! Good!" said the Apache leader, as Cal slowly arose and stood in front of him, but he did not shake the hand Cal offered him.
He turned to the other great men, and they exchanged a few sentences in their own tongue. They were hearing further explanations of the plan he had formed for the general good, and they nodded a cheerful assent when he ended with, "Kah-go-mish is a great chief."
They turned and stalked away, and with them went the lean, grim Apache who had hitherto been Cal's guard, and who had latterly seemed to be getting almost like a friendly acquaintance. His place was filled by a pair of short, bow-legged, swarthy old braves, whom Cal set down as the unpleasantest-looking Indians he had ever seen.
Very quickly the prisoner had good reasons for an every way more severe opinion of his new guards. They were under strict orders to prevent his escape, and no other especial directions had been given them. Of course they proposed to perform their sentry duty with as little trouble and as complete security as might be. Cal was lying upon the ground, while they were busy with their knives among the nearest bushes. He hardly looked after them, for his thoughts were wandering to the camp at Cold Spring and to the faces of those who hadtalked so much about him, all that evening, in the parlor at Santa Lucia. He had not the remotest dream of the precise experience which was coming to him. The two ill-looking braves returned, and one of them had a handful of forked branches, trimmed and pointed. They turned Cal over upon his back and stretched out his arms. A sharp thrill went through him as he began to comprehend what they were doing. Thrill followed thrill as they drove one forked stick into the ground over each wrist, and another over each ankle.
"Ugh!" exclaimed one of them. "No get away!"
"I am staked out!" said Cal to himself, huskily. "Staked out!"
Well might the cold shivers come with that terrible thought, for he had read of that method of securing prisoners and of what sometimes followed it. Staked out in the depths of a Mexican forest!
Ping and Tah-nu-nu had not been staked out that first night after their capture. Precisely how to keep them safely, yet humanely, had at first been a puzzle.
"If they once got away into the brush," said Sam Herrick, "you might as well hunt for a pair of sage-hens, and they'd about die before they'd be caught again. The boy's a game little critter, and the gal's got an eye like a hawk."
It was decided that they must be tied up, but it was so done as to inflict very little hardship. A thong of hide, knotted hard, so that nothing but a knife could undo the knot, connected an arm of each captive with a stout arm of a mesquit bush, close to the sharp-eyed sentinel at the head of the widest path.
There was no danger of any escape, and both Ping and his sister were wiser and tamer than Sam gave them credit for. They understood the kindness of Colonel Evans better and better every time they looked at the little mirrors or the stunning handkerchiefs. They were also aware that the Apache band had left the chaparral, for the message brought from Kah-go-mish by the Mexicans had beentranslated to them carefully. Their night was, therefore, not at all uncomfortable.
When the cavalry and cowboys set out to hunt for Cal in the morning, the old Chiricahua volunteered to act as guard while they were gone. It was almost as if he had taken a fancy to Ping and Tah-nu-nu, or it may have been that Sam was correct in saying, "The old wolf'd rather loaf under a bush and spin yarns than hunt through the chaparral under this kind of sunshine."
Loaf he did, in seemingly contented patience; and he had yarns to spin, as if he had been Wah-wah-o-be. Not a few of them related to old-time fights which had been fought around that very spring, in and out of the chaparral. Some of his stories were of a dreadfully blood-curdling kind, but they hardly seemed sensational to Ping and Tah-nu-nu. Perhaps the story which interested Ping most was a long one of a strong party of an unknown, nameless tribe from beyond the Eastern Sierras. They were tall braves, almost black, and they came all this distance to strike the Apaches.
The strangers camped one night at Cold Spring, and in the morning they found themselves penned in by overwhelming numbers of Apaches, who poured forth from the chaparral by every path except one. That was a path which the Apache chiefs did not know or had overlooked. They and their warriors swarmed in upon the strangers, expecting to destroy them all, and there was a terrible battle for a little time. Then, to the astonishment of all the Apaches, the Eastern war-party grew smaller and smaller, retreating across the rock. It left the spring behind,and dwindled away, fighting hard all the while. It was dripping out, so to speak, through the path in the chaparral that nobody knew anything about. The Apache warriors fought wonderfully to prevent that escape, and hundreds hurried around through the chaparral to attack the strangers in the rear and to cut off their retreat. It was of no use at all, said the old Chiricahua.
As soon as the last of the strangers fired his last arrow from the mouth of that old buffalo-path it seemed to close up, and the Apaches could not find it. They never could, nor did they ever succeed in finding where it led to, for the strange warriors escaped entirely, just as if they had crawled into the spring. It was "very great medicine," he said, and nothing at all like it had been heard of since then. He himself knew all the paths now to be found around Cold Spring, and all of them led out into the desert.
Thanks to the Chiricahua, Ping and Tah-nu-nu had a fairly comfortable morning of it. They even grew curious, instead of frightened, concerning what was next to come to them.
The old Chiricahua did not spend all his time stretched out upon the sand. He arose and walked around as if the hot sunshine agreed with him, and exchanged remarks with the white camp-guard in their sultry covert.
Ping and Tah-nu-nu stared around the open with a deepening interest in a spot which had so wonderful a history. Across it, on the opposite side, was one dense mass of chaparral, many yards in length, through which no opening appeared. In the middle of it arose a giant cactus, with a trunk like that ofa tree, and with two enormously thick, long arms reaching out near the top. One leaf pointed south and the other north, as if the cactus were a directing-post. Right there, they agreed, after some discussion, must have been the mysterious path that opened to let out the strange warriors, and then shut again.
Noon came, and the Chiricahua brought them some army bread, some fried bacon, and some coffee. They had tasted such things before, when their band was at the Reservation, and they had some for breakfast, but it was very wonderful to taste them again.
"Pale-face chief make Ping a blue-coat," said Tah-nu-nu. "Eat a heap."
"Tah-nu-nu squaw for blue-coat chief," said Ping. "Have big lodge. Cook his meat. Hoe his corn. Feed pony. Beat her with big stick. Ugh!"
They could rally one another about the prospect before them, but Ping stoutly declared that he would run away at the first opportunity. He would be a chief of his own people and not of any other. Tah-nu-nu as positively asserted her horror of ever becoming the wife of the greatest pale-face living. Not if he gave ever so many ponies for her, like a warrior of the Apaches.
Two hours later the cavalry squads and the cowboys began to straggle back to the spring. Their horses needed water and food and rest, and so did they. Hot, weary, disappointed, was the appearance of every man who came in, but none of them wore such a face as did Colonel Evans. He drank some water, but he did not eat nor did he speak to anybody.
"Ugh!" said Ping. "No find boy. Heap pony lose too. Bad medicine."
It was only a little later when something remarkable happened to a picket in a path of the southern chaparral. He stood by his horse ready to mount, as was his duty, but he was very sure that no Indians were around, and he only now and then gave a listless glance along the path. Suddenly, within twenty yards of him, an Indian stepped out of the bushes.
"Halt!" sprang to the lips of the startled soldier, but the Indian held up both hands, empty, above his head, to show that he carried no weapons.
The challenge was heard by the men around the spring, and they sprang to their feet, while others came out of the bushes. A dozen rifles were ready behind the picket as the solitary Indian came forward. He wore nothing but a waist-cloth, and from the belt of this he drew something which he held out and offered.
"Take it, Brady," said the voice of Captain Moore. "Bring him in. He's a messenger of some kind."
The cavalryman took it, but it was nothing more than a leathery cactus leaf, as wide as a stretched-out hand.
"How," said the Indian. "Kah-go-mish."
"That's it," exclaimed Sam Herrick. "I reckoned we'd hear from him. Colorado!"
The leaf was passed to Captain Moore, and the Apache brave followed him, but only as far as the end of that pathway. There he stood, and seemed almost like a wooden Indian. He saw both Pingand Tah-nu-nu, and they saw him, but if they knew him they did not say so.
"They thought nobody saw 'em, but they were making signs," said Sam; and the old Chiricahua muttered, "Ugh! Good!" as if he had understood something.
Just at that moment Captain Moore met Colonel Evans.
"Read that," he said, as he held out the cactus leaf.
There were letters deeply scratched into the smooth, fleshy surface.
Father I'm a Prisoner to Kah-Go-Mish Staked out last night Safe now Don't know where he means to go next He says you will hear some dayCalSend mother my love.
Father I'm a Prisoner to Kah-Go-Mish Staked out last night Safe now Don't know where he means to go next He says you will hear some day
Cal
Send mother my love.
It was a wonderful cactus leaf, for it made the strong hand of Colonel Abe Evans shake so that he could hardly hold it. Every pair of eyes around Cold Spring stared at it and at him, and when they once more turned to look at the Apache brave who had brought it he was not to be seen. He had vanished as if he had been a dream.
Even when he was lost in the chaparral, and saw the sun go down without any hope of escaping from the spider-web of buffalo-paths, Cal had not felt quite so badly as he did when he found himself staked out. There he lay upon his back under the vast canopy of an ancient cypress-tree. Near him the two uncouth-looking Apaches had thrown themselves upon the grass. They seemed to be asleep pretty soon, for there was no more need of their watching the prisoner.
Get away?
He could move his hands and feet just enough to keep the blood in circulation, and that was all. He could turn his head and look at the glow of the camp-fires and at the forms of men that now and then went stalking to and fro. They were only dog-soldier Indian police in charge of the camp, for the remainder of the band was taking all the sleep it could get. Even the dogs were entirely quiet. If he looked up, there was nothing but a dense mass of foliage, but it began at a height of fifty feet or more from the ground. Great branches reached out, and from these hung long ropes of vines of some sort, here and there, to the very ground. There was noopening through which a star could be seen, and it seemed to Cal as if his last hope had departed.
The position of a staked-out man is peculiarly uncomfortable, but it is the traditional method of the red men for securing captives. The Hurons and Shawnees and Iroquois, and other eastern tribes, made a forest-jail in precisely the same way before any white men ever came among them. Cal found that it was a great affliction not to be able to turn over in bed, but that was nothing to the torment of having a mosquito on his chin, another on his nose, and ten more humming around his head on all sides, with no hand loose to slap among them. He almost ceased thinking of Indian cruelties while suffering the merciless torments of those insects. Tired as he was, he felt no longer any inclination to sleep. His eyes grew accustomed to the dimness about him and over him. As he looked up into the branches of the tree, after a while, he heard a strange, mournful cry, very much like something that he had listened to before, and then something whitish and wide-winged came sweeping down from the darkness, and his eyes followed it as it swiftly shot across the camp.
"Owl, I guess," groaned Cal. "Never saw one so large before. White owl. What a hoot he had! Oh, my nose! These are the biggest kind of mosquitoes."
So they were, and they kept their victim in continual misery. It was not long before he saw something else, not so large as the owl, fly very silently past him. It went and came several times, with a peculiarly rapid flight, and he had pretty fair glimpses of it.
"What an enormous bat!" exclaimed Cal. "They have almost everything down here. What I'm most afraid of are scorpions and centipedes and tarantulas. Such woods as these must have lots of 'em, and I couldn't get away."
They were dreadful things to think of, but Cal had not remembered all of the customary inhabitants of a Mexican forest. He was put in mind of yet one more after a while. He heard a rustling sound among the grass and leaves near him, and it made him lift his head as high as he could. Just then something else lifted its head, and Cal saw a pair of small, glittering, greenish eyes that travelled right along at a few inches above the ground. The cold sweat broke out all over him, but he held perfectly still.
"They don't bite if you don't stir or provoke them," was the thought in his mind; but that snake was not of the biting, venomous kind. It was only a constrictor, not more than seven or eight feet long, and only three inches thick at his thickest point. He was in no hurry, and it seemed to Cal as if it took him about half an hour, or half a century, he could not tell which, to crawl across the pair of legs which the Apaches had pinned down. It was really about a quarter of a minute.
Cal had no idea how hard he had been straining at his fetters, spurred by the mosquitoes. He made an unintentional jerk with his right arm as the snake disappeared, and was startled by a discovery.
"Loose?" he said to himself. "Then I can loosen it more. I won't disturb either of those fellows, but I must scratch these mosquito-bites."
A pull, another pull, and that forked stick began to come up, for one of its legs had been put down in a gopher's hole, and had no holding. Out it came, slowly, softly, and Cal's right hand was free to reach over and help his left. That stake was hard pulling, but it came up at last, and then the ankles could be set free.
"I'll drive them all down again hard," said Cal to himself, and he did so.
"Let them wonder how I got out," he added; "but there isn't any use in my trying to run away. They'd only catch me and kill me at once."
He rose to his feet, and it occurred to him that his safest place might be by one of the smouldering camp-fires. The short June night was nearly over, and the dawn was in the tree-tops when Cal walked away from the shadow of the great cypress. He had a sort of desperate feeling, and it made him singularly cool and steady. He did not meet anybody on his way. His first discovery, as he drew near the fire, was that the Apaches had found plentiful supplies in the packs of the Mexican mules. They knew how to make coffee, too, for there was a big tin coffee-pot nearly full. Cal put it upon some coals to heat, and then he saw a tin cup lying on the ground, a box of sugar, a piece of bacon, and a fragment of coarse corn-cake.
"That'll do," he said to himself. "I may as well eat."
The coffee boiled quickly, and Cal sat with a cup of it in one hand, while with the other he held a stick with a slice of bacon at the fire end of it. He did not know what was happening under the cypress.
One wrinkle-faced brave opened his beady black eyes and looked at the place where the staked-out captive had been. The mocking smile he had begun flitted away from his lips.
"Ugh!" he exclaimed as he sprang up and kicked his comrade, and in an instant more two dreadfully puzzled Apaches were examining the forked stakes which ought to have had a white boy's wrists and ankles in them. Hard driven into the ground were all four, but the white boy? Where was he?
"Heap bad medicine!" exclaimed one brave, almost despairingly.
"Boy heap gone," said the other.
They looked in all directions, but the last refuge they dreamed of was the camp-fire where Cal was sitting.
Colonel Romero and most of his command spent the greater part of the day after Cal's capture in waiting for the pack-mule train. Some went out after game and did very well, and others went to hunt for signs of the Apaches of Kah-go-mish and did not do well at all. The rest, officers, cavalry, and rancheros, did nothing, and they all seemed to know how.
Right away after breakfast, and before the search for Cal began, the dozen rancheros who no longer had any pack-mules to lead left Cold Spring behind them. Out they marched, under careful directions, for the way given them by Sam Herrick and the Chiricahuas. They certainly marched well, but it was in dejected, disgusted silence. Kah-go-mish, and, after him and his Apaches, Colonel Romero and his horsemen, had trampled the old trail into a very new and plain one, easy to follow. It was well for the peace of mind of the train-guard without any train that it was so, for to be lost was for them to be starved, since they had not so much as a bow and arrows to kill a jackass rabbit. Not one of them now wore a hat, as the braves of Kah-go-mish had imitated their chief, so far as a dozen Mexican sombreros went. There was no danger, however, thatthe rancheros would get themselves tanned any darker. They pushed on steadily across the desert, and at about the time when the dispirited Americans who searched for Cal in the bushes gave it up and returned to Cold Spring there was a great shout in the camp of Colonel Romero. All the waiting for pack-mules and supplies was over, but the muleteers had arrived, disarmed, hatless, and on foot.
The colonel and every other soul in the camp said as much as they knew how to say concerning the cunning, daring, impudence, and wickedness of all Apaches, and particularly of Kah-go-mish.
The message of the chief to the colonel was pretty fully given, leaving out some of the animals, birds, and insects he had put into it, and a council of war was called to consider the matter.
The council was unanimous. Without the supplies that had been lost it was out of the question to chase Apaches. Without a good guess as to precisely where Kah-go-mish had gone, they knew that he was away beyond the desert somewhere, either in Mexico or the United States, and they might as well give him up. It was therefore decided that all possible hunting and fishing should be done at once, and that the entire command must find its way to the nearest Mexican settlements as fast as it could go.
So far as Colonel Romero's Mexicans were concerned Kah-go-mish already felt pretty safe, but he was by no means sure what other forces of the same nation might or might not be out in search of him.
As for the blue-coats and cowboys, the chief knew something about a boundary line. There was one around the Mescalero Reservation, and he hadbroken it, but he was sure that pale-faces never did such "bad medicine." He was safe from the Americans until he should see fit to re-enter the United States. That is, however, that he was proud to feel and say that so great a chief as himself could not long be entirely safe anywhere. Too many army-men wanted to see him.
In the camp at Cold Spring, Colonel Evans and all his friends felt that they would give a great deal to know the exact circumstances under which Cal had written his cactus-leaf letter. It passed from hand to hand, for every man to take a look at it. The cavalry company was short of officers, not having brought along even one lieutenant. The orderly sergeant, therefore, was the man next in rank to the captain, but there was another sergeant and two corporals, and they each had much more to say than could rightly have been said by mere private soldiers.
All agreed that it was a remarkable letter; all were glad to hear that Cal was safe, and all were glad that there was to be no more need of bushwhacking and bugle-work in the hot chaparral.
The cowboys had opinions of their own, and most of them looked a little blue.
"Staked out!" exclaimed Sam Herrick. "Colorado! To think of Cal Evans staked out!"
"Wall, now, they let him up again," said Bill. "Looks as if they didn't allow to torter him, leastwise not right away. What a lot of wooden-heads we were, though, to let that there 'Pache that brought the leaf slip out of reach the way he did."
"The cavalry had him," said Sam. "I took myeyes off him just a second, and when I looked again he wasn't thar."
The cactus leaf came back to Colonel Evans, and once more he studied every dent and scratch upon it. The writing looked as if it had been done with the point of a knife. There could be no doubt but what it was Cal's work.
"You'll see him again," said Captain Moore, encouragingly.
"It'll be about the time that Kah-go-mish sees his own children, I reckon," replied the colonel. "They're a sort of security, but something might happen to him in spite of their being here."
"Indians are uncertain; that's a fact," said the captain, "but you must keep up your spirits. Do you believe in Providence, colonel? I do."
"Do I?" said Cal's father. "Of course I do. Why?"
"Well, isn't it curious that Cal hasn't been hurt, through all this, up to the time when he wrote that letter? Wasn't he taken care of?" asked the captain.
"He got lost in the chaparral, didn't he? Isn't he a prisoner now?"
"They found him, and it may be a good thing that they did. Hold on a bit. Anyhow we'll keep a tight grip on those two young redskins."
"Ping," said the colonel. "That's a queer name for an Indian boy. Tah-nu-nu isn't so bad for a young squaw. We'll camp here to-night?"
"Of course," said the captain, "but we'll make an early start in the morning, and go back close along the boundary line. There's good grass beyond thedesert; wouldn't mind forgetting the line for a few miles if we came near enough to any Apaches. Sorry I didn't get another talk with the chief's messenger. It beats me how he slipped away."
The wild-looking-Mescalero postman who brought the cactus-leaf letter may have had another errand on his hands. When he halted at the head of the path, in full view of everybody, he did not look as if he meant to go away without an answer, and he did not. He obtained one from Ping and Tah-nu-nu, to carry to their father and mother. The Chiricahuas saw it given, and afterwards reported that the signs exchanged told that all were well, and that the young folk would soon be at liberty. Some other messages came and went, through hands and feet and features, and then the postman sank down into a sitting posture at the edge of the chaparral. That was where Captain Moore now remembered seeing the last of him.
The excitement over the cactus leaf absorbed all minds for a minute or so, then, and the Apache warrior went under a bush as if he had been a sage-hen. Once beyond it he was hidden, but he went snake-fashion some distance farther. As soon as he deemed it safe to stand erect he did so.
"Ugh!" he remarked. "Pa-de-to-pah-kah-tse-caugh-to-kah-no-tan heap great brave. Heap get away."
That was evidently his longest name, and he was a pretty tall Indian, and had a right to compliment himself just then. The men who hurried out after him, when they found that he was gone, went back again with a mental assurance that he wassomewhere in the chaparral, but that only he himself knew precisely where. While they were hunting, he was walking rapidly through the cross-paths of the spider-web. He came to a place where one of the horses won by his band near Slater's Branch was tied to a bush. He was saddled and bridled, and he carried also one of the small water-barrels found among the equipments of the Mexican pack-mules. The warrior picked up his weapons from the sand near the horse, drank some water, complimented himself again, and went off on foot to complete his day's business. He drew stealthily nearer and nearer to the cavalry and cowboy camp at Cold Spring, and now, while Captain Moore and Colonel Evans were expressing so much regret that the postman of Kah-go-mish was beyond their reach, a pair of eyes under a thorn-bush, within a hundred yards, watched their every movement and took note of whatever was going on around the spring.
The lurking Apache could see much, but he could hear little. Least of all could even his quick ears catch the suppressed whisper of Colonel Evans when at last he lay down upon his blanket for a few hours of rest.
"Cal," he said, "if I don't take you home with me, what shall I say to your mother?"