Chapter XII.
PING AND THE COUGAR
When Kah-go-mish set out upon his war-path, he went by ways which no white man's foot had ever trod. His family and followers began to perform the same feat in another direction.
Tah-nu-nu very nearly spoiled a name which was beginning to grow upon her brother. It was too long for common use, and it meant: "The-boy-whose-ear-pushed-away-a-piece-of-lead." Wah-wah-o-be, every now and then, strung all the syllables together, and the whole was like one of those mountain-passes, wider here and narrower there, but rugged all the way. Tah-nu-nu cut it short and called him Ping.
Wah-wah-o-be's tongue and the use she made of it helped such a trail as that amazingly. She had endless tales to tell concerning what her husband had done and was yet to do, and of the great deeds of her nation, and of the evil deeds and purposes of all pale-faces.
The questions asked by Ping and Tah-nu-nu were also endless. His proved that he knew some things already and that he had learned a part of them while the band had been upon the Reservation. Those of the little Apache girl proved for her as much and more. She must have thinking and imagining, and her eyes frequently took on a soft and dreamy look which did not come at all in those of her mother or her brother.
There were not many safer places in all the Sierras than was the little valley in which the band of Kah-go-mish encamped, an hour or so before the shadows became darkness among the chasms and gorges.
Ping ate a hearty supper, but he was in trouble. Other boys and girls, and some of the squaws, had taken a notion of turning their heads on one side and saying "Ping" when they met him, just as if they believed that he had winced from the touch of the bullet. He knew that he had not done so, but the taunt stirred up within him a very hot desire to do something heroic, like standing still to be shot at. He felt that it was an awful injustice to ridicule him for the very ear he was so proud of. The sting to his vanity kept him in motion after supper, and he strolled all over the valley. No lodges had been pitched, and the horses were scattered around, feeding, under the watchful care of several braves whose turn it was to serve as "dog-soldiers," or camp police.
The moonlight was brilliant, but Ping had no idea whether or not the mountain scenery it lighted up was grand. He did know that it was just the night for his father to do great deeds in, or for any wild animal to prowl around after its prey. The cries of several had been heard during the afternoon march and since the band halted.
Wah-wah-o-be had told him and Tah-nu-nu that these Mexican mountains fairly swarmed with Manitous and magicians, most of whom were favorable to the Apaches, but that all of them were more or less to be feared. For all that Ping knew, some of these unseen beings might be wandering up and down in that moonshine within arrow-shot of him. He felt safe in the camp, but nothing would have induced him to venture out among them. He knew very well that any Indian who got himself killed in the dark did not go to the Happy Hunting-Grounds, but had an awful time of it somewhere. As for the wild animals, he had a settled determination to kill a grizzly bear, some day, and to have his claws for a collar of honor to wear upon great occasions. He proposed to become a mighty hunter and warrior, but just now he felt sleepy, and he went back and lay down at the foot of a pine-tree, not far from the rest of his family.
Ping's eyes closed, but another pair did not. Tah-nu-nu's remained open in spite of her. She had heard more stories than Ping had, and while each tale had kept its old shape in his mind it had turned into twenty new forms in her own.
That is one difficulty about having an imagination, and Tah-nu-nu's had been getting more and more excited ever since the Mexican bullet tore her beautiful red dress. She kept thinking, too, of her heroic father and of the great things he would have to tell when he should get back from his war-path.
Tah-nu-nu lacked only a few years of being a grown-up squaw, and Wah-wah-o-be often braided her hair for her, like that of a young pale-face lady at the Reservation headquarters. Some day a great brave was to come and pay many ponies for her, and she would then rule his lodge for him and scold eloquently, like her mother. She had, therefore, a long list of matters to dream about as she lay awake among the bushes where Wah-wah-o-be and several other squaws had spread their blankets. It was at some distance from the fires which the "dog-soldiers" kept slowly burning. Not far away, on the left, were the tall pines under one of which Ping had curled down, while outside of all was a bare ledge of rock, littered with bowlders and fragments.
There were streaks and patches of shining white quartz here and there. Tah-nu-nu had never heard of such a thing as beauty, any more than Ping, but she felt its power as he did not. She arose and stole softly out to look at the marvellous picture made by that ledge in the moonlight. She looked and looked, but she had no Apache word for what she saw. It was all utterly still during many minutes, and then Tah-nu-nu was sure she saw something moving around at the farther border of the ledge. Her first impulse was to go out and see what it was, but her next thought was of her bow and arrows and of Ping.
"Ugh!" said Ping, as she shook his arm, and he sprang to his feet.
"Hist!" she said. "Come! Look!"
He strung his bow and fastened his quiver of arrows to his belt, while she whispered an exclamation. Then he went to where the family packs had been thrown down and brought back a weapon at which Tah-nu-nu nodded approval.
Days before that a careless pony had stepped upon and broken one of the best lances of Kah-go-mish. The blade was as keen as ever, and there were six feet of shaft remaining, below the crosspiece, so that it made a pretty dangerous-looking pike, although it was no longer a lance.
Ping followed Tah-nu-nu, and not a word was uttered until they were out upon the ledge. Some prowling wolf might be there, attracted by the odor of cooked meat and fish, or even some more important animal, for bears also have noses. Ping would not have given a useless alarm for anything. That would have brought upon him sharper ridicule than had the scratch on his ear. He had no idea that any human enemy could be near that lonely camp, and wild animals, he knew, were sure to keep at a distance from camp-fires. That was true, but then Wah-wah-o-be and her friends were not camp-fires, and were not near to any. They were asleep away out on that side of the camp, and it was so safe that it had no sentry, and the eyes of Tah-nu-nu had been of so much the greater value.
She and Ping were stealing out upon the broken ledge, and he had an arrow upon the string, but she had not, as yet.
"Ugh!" he said, as he crouched low and drew his arrow to the head.
Tah-nu-nu uttered a sharp cry. It was the Apache word for "cougar!"
Ping's bowstring twanged, and then he bounded to the right as if he were dodging something. So he was, for the whole camp heard the snarling roar with which a great "mountain lion" came rushing through the air and crashed down a bush close to the children of Kah-go-mish and Wah-wah-o-be.
SHE AND PING WERE STEALING OUT UPON THE BROKEN LEDGE.
Ping's arrow had been well aimed, for it was buried in the breast of the cougar. Another went into his side, as he came down, and that was from the hand of a girl-archer. Tah-nu-nu had worked like a flash, and her arrow operated as a sting, for the wounded beast made yet another tremendous bound.
All the squaws were on their feet, and Wah-wah-o-be could not have told why she picked up her blanket as she arose. She was worthy to be the wife of a chief, however, for when the cougar alighted almost in front of her, she promptly threw the blanket over him. Another and another blanket followed, while he rolled upon the ground, mad with pain and rage, tearing the unexpected bedclothes and snarling ferociously.
There had come into the dull mind of The-boy-whose-ear-pushed-away-a-piece-of-lead a great memory of a story he had heard of a warrior who faced a cougar single-handed. With it came another, of a chief standing alone upon a rock while a hundred enemies fired at him.
"I am the son of Kah-go-mish!" he shouted, exultingly, and before the fierce wild beast could free himself, there was Ping in front of him, spear in hand.
Any experienced cougar-hunter would have been inclined to say, "Good-bye, Ping," but the Apache boy was not thinking of the risk he was running. He knew what to do, and he put all the strength of his tough young body into the thrust with which he sent his weapon, low down, inside the animal's shoulder. The sharp blade went in, up to the crosspiece, just as the bow of Tah-nu-nu twanged again, and there were piercing shrieks on all sides. The loudest came from Wah-wah-o-be, as the cougar made a convulsive effort to reach his rash assailant, for over and over went Ping in spite of all his bracing.
He would have fared worse if the butt of the spear-shaft had not caught a better brace against the ground, so that the cougar did not fall upon him.
The blade had done its work. There were two or three more long rips made in Wah-wah-o-be's woollen treasure and then the cougar lay still.
Ping was beyond all ridicule now, for he had proved himself a young brave. Wah-wah-o-be was so proud of him that she had not a word of grief to utter over the mess of woollen ribbons which was all that remained of her best Reservation blanket.
Chapter XIII.
THE RETURN OF KAH-GO-MISH
There were no alarms of cougars nor of any human wild people around the Santa Lucia ranch. Even the dogs could hardly get up an excuse for healthy barking after dark.
Just in the dawn of that next morning, however, the cowboy on guard at the stockade gate was taken by surprise. Nobody rode up to the wooden barrier, but his quick ears caught a stealthy footstep behind him, and he turned sharply around with his hand on the lock of his rifle.
Did she mean to murder him?
There she stood, Norah McLory, with a double-barrelled gun in one hand and a cleaver in the other, and a red shawl pinned all around her. She made a very striking picture, and the look on her face was very much as if she were ready to strike.
"What's up, Norah?" exclaimed the cowboy.
"Faith an' I'm oop mesilf," said she. "I couldn't slape for thinking of thim red villains."
"No redskins 'round here," almost yawned the weary sentry.
"Ye don't know that," said Norah, "and I wanted to see was you watchin'. We moight all be murdhered in bed."
"The dogs'd take care o' that," said he, "and, oh, but I'm hungry."
"I'll have you the cup of hot coffee right soon," said Norah, "and you needn't tell the byes I watched ye."
That was a bargain, but before the coffee boiled there was proof of other wakefulness besides Norah's. Mrs. Evans and Vic were out to look at the garden and to feed the chickens and to talk about what might be going on in the far-away camp which contained the red mustang.
After breakfast the cowboys went to their duties. So did Norah and the Mexican servants. Vic and her mother took a brisk horseback ride, and came back to their home.
"Everything is too quiet, mother," said Vic, impatiently. "There isn't anything going on! I want to see somebody! I want to see something! I hate this waiting."
"I'm afraid it will be days and days before we can hear from your father or Cal," said Mrs. Evans, "but I hope it will be good news when it comes."
The entire garrison of Santa Lucia, ladies, servants, and cowboys, talked of the men on the trail of Kah-go-mish, and wondered where and under what circumstances their camp might be getting breakfast.
Cal Evans himself, although he awoke in the camp they were talking about, did not clearly know where it was, and while he was grooming the red mustang he said as much to Sam Herrick.
"Colorado!" remarked Sam; "you're just like everybody else. I believe those Chiricahuas have lost the trail, or else they don't mean we shall find the Mescaleros."
"What's going to be done?" asked Cal.
"Your father and Captain Moore mean to push right on," said Sam. "They've got some plan or other. Tell you what, though, if I was an Apache chief, and if I'd gobbled a drove of horses, as they did, I'd take my chances over in Mexico. I wouldn't come loafing out hereaway, to be followed by cavalry and caught napping. There's a plain of awfully dry gravel a little west of where we are now."
Cal finished Dick, and then he carried his questions to his father.
"Sam's right," said the colonel. "He's an old hand at trailing. We believe the redskins have crossed the line."
"Into Mexico? Shall we miss 'em?"
"No, Cal, I think not. Captain Moore knows something of what the Mexicans are doing. The Apaches won't be comfortable there. What we're guessing at is the place where they're likely to come out again. We're pretty sure we know about where it's got to be."
He might have been less positive if he could have seen how very comfortable the band of Kah-go-mish looked in their camp among the Mexican mountains at that very hour.
It was a safe place, but it was not one to remain in for any great length of time, for the horses had already eaten up nearly all the grass. Some of the braves had gone out after game successfully, while others had brought in fish, so that the human beings had food enough, but the quadrupeds would soon wear out the pasturage of so small a valley.
Ping's cougar was regarded as capital game, the best kind of meat in the world to Indian tastes, as far as he would go.
The discovery had already been made that more plentiful grass could not safely be sought for under the Mexican flag. Too many lancers and rancheros were out on the war-path, and the thoughts of all the band were turning towards some better refuge north of the United States line. Everybody was contented for the day, however, or until about the middle of the afternoon. Even Wah-wah-o-be was astonished then, and Ping for a moment forgot his cougar. The little valley rang with a great whoop, which came from its southerly end. Every brave within hearing did his best to answer that whoop, and the whole camp was at once in a state of excitement, for it was the voice of the returning Kah-go-mish, and it was thrilling with triumph.
Here he came, not astride of the doleful pony that had carried him away, but riding an elegantly caparisoned steed. Some other horses followed him. He had gone out almost weaponless, and he was now overloaded with weapons. He had gone bareheaded, and now he wore a gorgeously gold-laced and yellow-plumed cocked hat, recently the special pride of a major of Mexican militia. Even the Reservation chimney-pot silk beauty, green veil and all, was altogether nothing compared with this.
Kah-go-mish had not exactly played Cortes, and conquered Mexico, but what he had done was very nearly the same to Wah-wah-o-be, Tah-nu-nu, and The-boy-whose-ear-pushed-away-a-piece-of-lead.
It was a great time, but the chief had the plans of a general in his head. No Mexican force would follow him into the Sierra, but one might try to head him off on the other side, and take away his horses, and it was time to be moving.
The band broke camp at once, to push on through the rugged mountain-paths as long as there might be daylight enough to go by. That was why the darkness, when it came, found them scattered all along the bottom of a tremendous gorge, walled in by vast perpendicular faces of quartz and granite rock. Even Ping thought it wonderful, when the straggling camp-fires were kindled, that their light did not stream half-way up those walls, and left the rest in shadow until the moon rose high enough to show them.
Chapter XIV.
THE FOUNTAIN IN THE DESERT
On the morning of the second day after Ping and Tah-nu-nu and the blankets proved to be too much "bad medicine" for one poor cougar, the sun arose hotly over one of the dreariest bits of scenery in southern New Mexico. It was the gravel desert described to Cal Evans by Sam Herrick. No mountains were visible on the south or east, and the ranges of tall peaks westerly and northerly were a very long day's journey from the most interesting spot in that entire plain. Everywhere else even the cactus-plants and scrubby mesquit-trees and stiff-fingered sage-brushes were scarce, as if they did not care to struggle for a living in so mean a country. Here, on the contrary, there was a dense chaparral of every kind of growth, excepting tall trees, that is common to that climate, and spreading for miles and miles. In many places the chaparral was so high and so thick that a man on horseback could have been hidden in it from another man at a short distance.
If any man had ridden into it, however, perhaps his first declaration might have been, "All this thorn and famine shrubbery was laid out by a lot of crazy spiders."
Innumerable paths led through it, crossing or running into each other in a manner to have perplexed a carpet-weaver or a military map-maker, and everybody knows what tangled patterns they can make. The spiders had not done it, but the larger kinds of four-footed wild animals. They had worked at those paths for ages, treading them down all the while, and preventing any vegetable growth from choking them up.
There was really no tangle, at least none that could perplex the clear mind of a bison or an antelope, and all the threads of that spider-web had more or less reference to a common centre towards which the main lines tended.
The dry and thirsty bushes on the outer circumference of the chaparral should not have settled where they did. They ought rather to have learned a lesson from the bisons, and have gone in farther. The wide main pathways ran into each other, and all the smaller pathways melted into them, until only twenty or thirty ends of paths led into a great open space, in the middle of which was the one thing needed by all that vast plain, with its dreary gravel and sand and alkali.
Water?
Yes, water as clear as crystal, and that seemed to be colder than ice.
The thirsty animals who were from year to year to traverse that plain had been provided for as if they had been so many sparrows, and the cactus-plants as if they had been lilies of the field.
The greater part of the open space was occupied by a seamed and broken face of quartz rock, nowhere rising more than a few feet above the general level. Scores and scores of miles away, among the unknown recesses of the Sierra, westward, was a lake, a reservoir, into which the everlasting snows continually melted. At some point of that reservoir a channel had been opened through and under the cloven strata of the rock, making a natural aqueduct. Cold and clear ran the snow-water, never failing in its wonderful supply, until it burst up into the burning sunshine in the very middle of the desert, of the chaparral, and of the spider-web of paths. It danced and gurgled, this morning, right under the timid noses of a gang of antelopes who had trotted in there by the shortest lane, not missing their way for a yard.
A motherly old sage-hen watched them from under a bush upon one side of the open, while in the opposite scrubs a large jackass rabbit sat, with lifted forefeet and with ears thrust forward, his face wearing such a look of surprised disapproval as only a rabbit can put on.
One antelope held his head up and listened while the rest were drinking. He turned his head and looked around him, and in every direction he could see an extraordinary collection of white or whitening bones, large and small. Perhaps, year after year, many over-thirsty animals had rushed hastily in and drank too much of that snow-water. At all events, they had ended their days there. The antelope, or anybody else, could also have said to himself, "Tomato-cans? Empty sardine-boxes? Bottles? Old wheels? I wonder how many and what kind of white men or Indians have camped around Fonda des Arenas?" If he had been an American antelope, however, he would have said Cold Spring, and not Fountain of the Sands.
The antelopes were divided as to their nationality, and changed their citizenship several times, for, right through the middle of the spring and along the little rill by which it ran across the rock lay the boundary line between the United States and Mexico. Some curious chisel-marks in one place had meanings with reference to the boundary, and so it must have been there; but even the keen eyes of two buzzard eagles, soaring overhead, could not have seen the line itself.
Suddenly the antelope chief gave a bleat and a bound, and in a twinkling he and his little band disappeared in the southern chaparral. Every one of them had fled into Mexico.
Only ears as sensitive as their own could have heard any warning in what seemed the almost painful silence of that solitude, but they were right in running away. Not many minutes elapsed before several of the paths opening towards the spring were occupied by stealthy human forms on foot, peering around as if to make sure that no other human beings had arrived before them. They answered one another with low calls which sounded like suppressed barks of a prairie-wolf, and these were repeated in the chaparral behind them.
Then a tall, broad, dignified man, in a red flannel waist-cloth and a gorgeous cocked hat, and with red stocking-legs on his arms, strode out towards the bubbling fountain with the air of a ruler taking possession.
"Kah-go-mish is a great chief!" he remarked, emphatically. "Cheat pale-face a heap. Ugh!"
If other remarks made by himself and by a dusky throng, now pouring out of the chaparral, could have been interpreted, it would have been understood that a plan of Kah-go-mish for escaping from some pursuit or other had thus far worked well, but that the danger was by no means at an end.
Wah-wah-o-be was one of those who shook their heads about it very wisely. She said very little, and neither Ping nor Tah-nu-nu was with her. If she knew where they were she did not even mention that fact.
There was plenty of room for the whole band of Kah-go-mish, horses and all. They had travelled since the dawn of day, or before, and although it was still quite early they were hungry and thirsty.
There was the spring for thirst, and fires were kindled. These were as quickly put out, after breakfast had been cooked and eaten, and when the sun had dried the waters thrown upon the embers no newcomer could have guessed how long it might be since the last coal died.
"Leave heap sign," said Kah-go-mish. "Paleface know great chief been here. Not know where gone. Ugh!"
Sign enough was made, for now the band moved away westerly by a path of the chaparral. Broad and plain was the trail left behind and it was all on Mexican sand. It went right along until it reached and crossed another wide path at right angles. Here most of the band turned to the left, under orders, but the rest, a lot of warriors, went on, making false trail as if for a purpose, half a mile farther, to a wide, empty patch of hard gravel. No two of the warriors left that patch together, and the trail died there. Of the band which turned to the left, at the crossing, the squaw part pushed on while some cunning old braves worked like beavers to scratch out every trace that they or theirs had entered that left-hand path at all.
It was all a very artistic piece of Indian dodging, and when it was completed the entire band of Kah-go-mish was encamped in a secluded nook of the chaparral about a mile and a half from the spring. So far as any tracks they had made were concerned, they would have been about as hard to find as the sage-hen, who had now returned to her place under the bush by the spring, and had distinguished company to help her watch it.
A sage-hen crouching low in sand and shadowed by wait-a-bit thorn twigs is pretty well hidden. So is a great Apache chief when he has left his cocked hat and his horse a mile and a half away and is lying at full length, in a rabbit path, a few yards behind the sage-hen.
Kah-go-mish had his own military reasons for hurrying back to play spy, and his face wore an expression of mingled cunning, patience, and self-satisfaction. Something like a crisis had evidently arrived in his affairs, and he was meeting it as became a Mescalero-Apache statesman of genius. He and the sage-hen lay still for a while, but it was not long before there was another arrival at the spring.
No sound escaped the lips of Kah-go-mish, but the expression of his face changed suddenly.
Perhaps the new arrival had been long in convincing himself that he could safely venture to the spring, but he now left his pony at the edge of the quartz level and walked on to the water's edge. He was not a white man. He was one of the Indians who had said "How" to Vic and Mrs. Evans, and the sight of him seemed to arouse all the wolf in Kah-go-mish. The eyes of the Mescalero leader glistened like those of a serpent as he thrust his rifle forward. There was a sharp report and Kah-go-mish bounded from his cover, knife in hand, for the Chiricahua scout lay lifeless upon the rock.
"To-da-te-ca-to-da no more be heap eyes for blue coat," said the ferociously wrathful chieftain, and a moment later, as he again disappeared in the chaparral, he added, bitterly: "Heap sign now. Ugh. Pale-face find him. Bad Indian! Ugh!"