Chapter XV.
LOST IN THE CHAPARRAL
Kah-go-mish and all the other members of his band except two had been entirely absorbed in the marching and counter-marching required to make other people lose track of them. Meantime the two exceptions had been threading the blind paths of the chaparral more rapidly and a great deal more anxiously.
Neither of the ponies which carried Ping and Tah-nu-nu was hampered by any saddle, and both were somewhat wild, but they were not wild enough to have an antelope's learning as to the streets and lanes of that bushy wilderness. Their young riders were just as ignorant. After the fight with the cougar, Ping remembered that when Tah-nu-nu sent her last arrow into the side of the great cat she had seemed to him to be about twice her ordinary size. Her bow had twanged at the moment when he had himself felt like a very small boy indeed, about to be stepped upon by the worst claws in the world. She, at that moment, had thought of her brother as a young warrior and a hero. Now, however, they were even, for they both had lost their way; and she spoke of him as a mere boy, while he described her as a little squaw, from whom, of course, any great amount of wisdom was hardly to be expected. Whether they rode fast or slow, up one path or down another, seemed to make little difference. They were in a complete puzzle, and there were a number of square miles of it.
At last an avenue of more than ordinary width seemed to offer a promise that it might lead somewhere in particular, instead of everywhere in general, and Ping remarked: "Ugh! Heap trail," as he rode into it.
"Buffalo trail," added Tah-nu-nu, satirically, and she was right, but it was the best highway they had yet discovered.
On they rode, for a while, making fewer turns and windings, until they came to a problem which halted them. The wide path split into two that were equally wide, and made a good place for a lost Apache boy and girl to argue a knotty question. Tah-nu-nu favored the right-hand road while Ping preferred the left, and neither of them could give a good reason for any choice.
After Ping killed the cougar, the heart of it had been given him for breakfast and the tongue for dinner, but, whatever else he had gained by eating them, he had not acquired that animal's natural-born bush wisdom. He may at some time have eaten an antelope's ear, however, for he now put up his hand as if another bullet had whizzed past him.
"Ugh!" he exclaimed. "Hear pony! Tah-nu-nu, come!"
They wheeled their own ponies behind the nearest thick bushes and dismounted. The newcomer might be a friend, but he was just as likely to be an enemy. Ping got an arrow ready, and felt very much like a young cougar waiting for an opportunity to spring.
They had only a minute to wait, and then another exceedingly puzzled young person drew his rein at the point where the wide path divided. Ping's eyes opened wide and they glittered enviously. Never before had he seen so dashing-looking a young paleface, nor any kind of boy mounted upon such a beauty of a horse. Oh, how the son of Kah-go-mish did long to become the owner of that red mustang.
"Dick," said the boy in the saddle, very much as if he had been talking to another human being, "did you know that you and I had lost our way? How do you suppose we shall ever get out of this scrape? It's a bad one."
Dick neighed discontentedly, and pawed the sand, for he was thirsty, but he made no other answer. He was as ignorant as was his master concerning those roads and of what was at that moment taking place among the bushes.
The Mescalero branch of the great Apache nation, while at war with Mexico, was at peace with the United States, although it was by means of a treaty which had been badly cracked, if not broken, upon both sides. As for The-boy-whose-ear-pushed-away-a-piece-of-lead, however, he felt in all his veins that he was at war with the entire white race, and that he wanted that red mustang.
His arrow was on the string, and he was lifting his bow, when Tah-nu-nu caught him firmly by the arm.
"Ugh!" she whispered. "Kah-go-mish say no kill. No fight blue-coat. No take 'calp. Ping no shoot."
The too eager young warrior struggled a little, but Tah-nu-nu was determined. Then he seemed to assent, and she let go of his arm while they both listened to something more that the white boy said. They could not quite understand the words, but they could read the decision he came to.
"Dick," he remarked, "here goes. We'll take to the right, if it leads us to China."
With the guiding motion of his hand the red mustang sprang forward. Just as he did so, a fiercely driven arrow whizzed by the head of his master. It only missed its mark by a few inches, and they had been gained for Cal by the quick hand of Tah-nu-nu.
"Indians!" was the exclamation that sprang to Cal's lips. "An ambush."
He rode on rapidly a little distance, and then he pulled in his pony, adding: "Things are getting pretty bad for us, Dick."
"Ugh!" Ping had said, as Cal disappeared. "Tah-nu-nu make him lose arrow. Lose pony. Heap squaw!"
"Kah-go-mish say, good!" she sharply responded. "Heap mad for kill."
She had saved the life of the young pale-face stranger, and she felt sure of her father's approval. She had heard him give his warriors rigid orders against unnecessary bloodshed. He had specified blue-coats and cowboys with thoughtful care for the future of his band, if not for the treaty, but he had said nothing at all about Chiricahua scouts.
Ping was compelled to yield the point, but it was plain to both of them that if there were more pale-faces to the right, for that one to follow after, their own course must be to the left. Down that path they rode, accordingly, and they were going right and wrong at the same time.
Cal Evans, on the other hand, was going altogether in the wrong path, and was doing it pretty rapidly. It occurred to him that buffaloes marching two abreast must have laid out that bush-bordered lane, but then other lanes as wide ran into it or crossed it. He at last brought Dick down to an easy canter and tried to study the situation carefully. He had heard of experienced plainsmen who had lost themselves in chaparral. They had wandered around aimlessly, for days and days, crossing their own trails again and again. At last they had lost hope and had lain down and died of hunger and thirst at only short distances from friends who were hunting for them.
Cal's heart beat hard as he recalled those terrible stories. The sun seemed to be growing hotter overhead. The wind had almost died out, and the air was like that of a furnace. He was painfully thirsty, and he knew that Dick had had no water since daylight, and then not a full supply, for the expedition had been in the desert since the previous afternoon. They had all travelled rapidly, too, in the hope of reaching Cold Spring early.
"What will father say," thought Cal, "when he finds out that I'm missing? What would mother and Vic say, if they knew? I only rode ahead a little way, and I can't guess how I came to lose track of them all."
No man who gets lost can ever tell exactly how he managed to do it.
Very mocking were the curves of that seeming road to nowhere, and many were the narrower lanes that entered it as if they also wanted to go there. Cal could hardly have guessed how many sultry miles he travelled before he came suddenly upon a wider, sandier path, bordered by taller bushes, that struck straight across the other.
"It's time for us to try something new, Dick," he said, but he said it dolefully, as he turned to the left and pushed down the unknown avenue. It had its curves, like the other, and it was wider here and narrower there, and it led him on for a full hour. He had long since almost forgotten about the whizzing arrow, in his deep anxiety, and he knew that there could not be ambushes everywhere.
At the end of the long hour he and Dick stood stock-still. They were on a slight elevation from which a considerable sweep of the chaparral could be overlooked. It was a dreary, dreary prospect, and it seemed to be interminable. Cal stared wistfully in all directions, but north and south and east and west appeared to be alike without hope. Into that lonely path no other human being was likely to come. Dick and Cal were like flies, caught in the vast web. In spite of the glowing sunshine, all things seemed to be growing very dark indeed, and they even grew darker when his feverish imagination wandered away to Santa Lucia.
"It's a fact, Dick," he said, huskily, "you and I are lost."
Chapter XVI.
AN INVASION OF TWO REPUBLICS
Kah-go-mish was a great chief, and had employed all the cunning in him in his arrangements for eluding his pursuers. It now remained to be seen whether or not he had made blunders.
The Chiricahua scout lay on the white quartz only a few yards from the water's edge. The sage-hen sat under the bush. The Apache leader lay once more in his rabbit-path behind her, having regained it by a long circuit through the chaparral.
The two buzzards overhead were floating somewhat lower, and they could see all over the tangled maze of scrubby growth and buffalo-paths.
From the southward came a soft, warm wind, carrying with it sounds which brought a quick, vindictive gleam into the eyes of Kah-go-mish. First came the faint, distant music of a bugle, as if to inform both friends and enemies that a cavalry column was picking its way through the spider-web. A little later shouts could be heard, and then the rattle of sabres and the neighing of horses. Nearer and nearer drew the assurance that quite a lot of fellows of some sort were at hand, and all the while the buzzards overhead, and they only, were aware that a very different-looking set were approaching from another direction.
This second party was also armed and mounted, but it plodded on in silence and not rapidly. They seemed disposed to feel their way with some care, although not at all in doubt as to the path they were following. Part of these silent horsemen were all the way from Fort Craig, hunting some Mescaleros who had left their Reservation, and the rest of them were from Santa Lucia ranch and its neighborhood, and had come for some stolen horses. Just now many of them seemed disposed to discuss the military tactics of Mexican commanders.
"All the Indians in the chaparral have had good bugle-warning, Sam," said Colonel Evans to the cowboy nearest.
"Colorado!" said Sam. "Reckon they have. But then no redskins nor anybody else 'd stop here long. We know one thing, though."
"What's that, Sam?"
"Well, if our redskins are here away, they've been raced out of Mexico. We'll get 'em on American sile."
That appeared to be the opinion of Captain Moore, but the entire party had a hot, thirsty, jaded look, as of men and horses who had made a long push across a desert and wanted rest and water.
"We'll try and reach the spring first," said the captain, "and claim our first choice of a camping-ground."
That was why neither of the two bodies of cavalry got there first, and why Kah-go-mish and the sage-hen heard, pretty soon, an American cavalry bugle from the east answering the Mexican music from the south.
Then the buzzards overhead saw men in uniform and other men in no uniform ride out of the chaparral, from opposite sides, into the great rocky open around the spring.
Just before that Kah-go-mish had seen three Chiricahuas steal out from the cover. They had scouted all around it, and one of them had passed very near the lurking Mescalero. He had been in no danger, for Kah-go-mish had heard the bugles and knew that he must lie still. All three were now grouped around their lost comrade on the rock.
"Ugh!" they said, as they looked at him. "Kah-go-mish."
Captain Moore had been informed of the name of the chief whose band had wandered from the Reservation, and now the Chiricahuas were in no doubt as to whose work lay before them. It was part of an old personal feud, they said, and had nothing to do with pale-faces or stolen horses.
Straight to the margin of the spring rode Captain Moore and the Mexican commander, each followed by several other riders, while behind them their men filed out of the chaparral.
The meeting of the two officers was ceremoniously polite, and was followed by rapid explanations that left them in little doubt but that they were pursuing the same enemy.
"Señor," said Captain Moore, with a smile, at last, as he looked around, "your forces have invaded the territory of the United States."
"Señor Capitan," smiled the Mexican, with a low bow, "part of the troops under your command have broken the treaty and are now in Mexico."
"I propose, then, Colonel Romero," said the captain, "that we compromise the matter. My command is almost thirsty enough to drink up the American half of this spring. How are your own?"
"Dry as the sand," would have been a fair interpretation of the polite Mexican's reply, and orders were given on both sides which provided for the thirsty men and animals without delay.
There were pleasant-voiced introductions among the gentlemen, and the blue-coats and cowboys mingled freely with the lancers and rancheros. If Kah-go-mish did not know it before, he now learned that these Mexicans, of whom there were nearly two hundred, were not the same force that he had collected his target-fee from.
A sort of mutual council of war of all the officers and Colonel Evans was held over the body of the dead Chiricahua scout.
"It may indicate the presence of only one warrior," said Captain Moore, "or it may mean that the whole band is near – "
At that moment a loud whoop sounded from the chaparral, westerly. It was followed by the hasty return of one of the Chiricahuas to announce that he had found the trail of the Apaches and that it led towards the south, into Mexico.
"You can follow them, then, and I cannot," said Captain Moore to Colonel Romero. "I should like to consult with Colonel Evans as to my own course."
He looked around as if searching for the owner of Santa Lucia, who had been at his elbow, but had suddenly seemed to vanish.
"UGH!" THEY SAID, AS THEY LOOKED AT HIM. "KAH-GO-MISH"
"Si, Señor Capitan," replied Colonel Romero. "We will follow the trail at once, and I am glad that all the glory is to be ours. We shall, at all events, be in a good camping-ground by sunset."
"Your whole command is with you?" asked the captain.
"Except a pack-train and spare horses," replied Colonel Romero. "We pushed ahead a little, and they took it easily. They are only a few miles behind and will soon catch up with us."
He said more, and he had a good voice. He accompanied his very distinct utterances with gestures, not dreaming that the sage-hen or any other improper listener was near enough to learn too much.
Even in his rabbit-patch, however, Kah-go-mish could not entirely restrain his thoughts.
"Ugh!" he muttered. "Heap pony. Heap mule."
Horses and men had quenched their thirst and both sides were eating luncheon. The two commanders separated, and Captain Moore turned away. As he did so a large man stood before him with flushed, excited face.
"Captain Moore, Cal is lost! Lost in the chaparral!"
That was why he had stepped away so suddenly, for Sam Herrick had first beckoned to him, and then had led him aside to say that Cal had not come in with the rest. He had hunted for him all around, but not one of the men had seen him for an hour and a half. The colonel himself had at once made rapid inquiries, and now he had brought the news to Captain Moore, in such a state of mind that he could not think.
"Cal!" exclaimed the captain. "Lost! Oh, no. Don't be so agitated. You can find him."
The colonel tried to speak, but his voice refused to do its duty.
"Herrick, Sam," said the captain, quietly, "those Greasers have more bugles than they need. Buy a couple. I'll lend you mine. Stop. I'll speak to Colonel Romero about it."
"Bugles?" said Colonel Evans.
"Why, yes," said the captain, "if Cal is tangled in the chaparral he must have something to guide him. I must push on, along the boundary line, to see what luck I can have with the Mescaleros. Colonel Romero and his men will follow their direct trail, and so they won't find them; but we both make it safer for you. Patrol back, blowing all sorts of noise, and Cal's pretty sure to ride right up to one bugle or another. Scatter 'em wide."
"Thank you. Thank you, captain," said the colonel. "Sam, get all the bugles you can. Give a horse for a bugle. Give anything!"
The captain at once rode into Mexico for a talk with Colonel Romero. There was, indeed, an over-supply of musical instruments in that command, and its gallant colonel sympathized impressively with the feelings of Cal's father and friends. So did two militiamen who were happy enough to own unnecessary bugles. Sam Herrick did not give a horse for either, but one battered, crooked tube of sheet brass brought enough money to replace it with a new one at least half silver.
Captain Moore hardly needed to explain so simple a plan. He had tried it twice, he said, for stray men of his own, and in each case they had ridden safely in. Neither he nor Colonel Evans guessed that Cal had already ridden away beyond the stretch of chaparral in which they proposed to toot for him.
Chapter XVII.
HOW PING AND TAH-NU-NU GOT TO THE SPRING
Colonel Romero and his gay lancers and his picturesque ranchero militia rode away along the well-marked trail so carefully left for them by the Apaches. It led manifestly into their own republic, and there seemed to be no danger whatever of their losing it. They had two bugles less than when they entered the chaparral, but they made noise enough to notify any red men lurking in the bushes ahead of them that they were coming. The one special precaution which they continually took was against possible ambuscades. They were determined not to be taken by surprise, and their wary scouts routed out a considerable number of jackass rabbits and sage-hens. Beyond these they met with no excitement whatever until they came to the barren gravel patch, beyond which the Apache trail did not go.
Here a halt was called – necessarily. The pride of a Mexican army officer, and of a round score of them, was in the way of going back to Cold Spring to tell some Americans of a kind of defeat. It was talked over, and a decision was wisely reached. The Apaches, it was concluded, had not gone down into the earth nor up into the air. They had scattered through different paths of the chaparral, to come together again at some point farther on – probably at the outer edge of it. Kah-go-mish would have fully approved of that piece of sagacity, for it sent the Mexican part of the forces pursuing him a number of miles farther into Mexico. As for that cunning Apache himself, he seemed a model of human patience. The sage-hen had at last deserted him. She had seen the Mexicans depart, and that was enough for her. Perhaps she knew of other old chaparral ladies like herself to whom she wished to tell the latest news.
At all events she scurried suddenly away and left Kah-go-mish trying to understand the next military operation going on at the spring.
Of course the slaughtered Chiricahua scout was carried into the bushes and buried. Then the blue-coats and their commander rode away upon a path which promised to keep them most of the time within the United States. After that the cowboy part of the American expedition gathered at the spring, and evidently held a sort of council. It was of importance to Apache plans to get an idea of what theirs might be, and the watcher in the rabbit-path lay very still. He saw man after man take a bugle and blow on it, as if trying to see how loud a noise he could make. He did not know Joaquin by name, but gave him the prize, decidedly, in his own mind.
While all this was going on, it might have been as well for the family peace of the chief if he could have been attending to the welfare of his two promising children.
Ping and Tah-nu-nu rode on, with something like hope and confidence, for a while after their glimpse of the red mustang and his rider. Every now and then The-boy-whose-ear-pushed-away-a-piece-of-lead had something to say about the wonderful pony he had seen, and it was plain that he did not quite agree with Tah-nu-nu as to the wickedness of sending the arrow after Cal.
His band had left the Reservation and had escaped from all peril of becoming civilized, and some day or other he felt sure of going upon the war-path against the pale-faces with the hope of killing them all. In the meantime they were coming to take away his father's horses, and he believed himself at war with them.
He grew moody and silent, and it was partly because he and his pony were uncommonly thirsty. He did not say so, for he was a young warrior who had already slain a cougar and had eaten the cougar's heart, well roasted, and it did not become him to show any signs of fatigue or suffering. The path they followed was a strip of yielding sand, up to a point where Ping pulled in his pony with a jerk. Another path, as wide, ran into it right there, bringing "bad medicine."
"Ugh!" exclaimed Ping. "Pale-face! Blue-coat!"
"Ugh!" was the only response of Tah-nu-nu, as she leaned over and looked down at the plain marks left behind by the hoofs of iron-shod horses.
There were many of them, and they all went in one direction.
"Heap blue-coat!" exclaimed Ping, again and again; and it seemed as if the troubles of Tah-nu-nu and himself had been multiplied.
The trail of their enemies led to some place in particular beyond a doubt, but that must be the very place to which no Apache boy and girl wished to go. They must try another path.
Slowly, watchfully, they followed the cavalry trail for a moderate distance until another hopeful outlet presented itself. They were agreed this time, and rode on side by side, wondering more and more where could be the hiding-place of their own people.
They had not by any means wandered so far out of the right track as had Cal Evans, but, after their first mistake had been discovered, had seemed to find a curious kind of instinct of their own guiding them – just a little like that which might have led a pair of unwise young antelopes. They were born children of the plains, and Cal was not. Even now their general idea of the direction to be taken led them towards the central point which should have been their aim.
Perhaps it would be more correct to say that it should not have been their aim under the circumstances, for it was the very point to which the other winding pathway, the cavalry trail, also tended after making a wide sweep.
There was no one to give them any information, but again and again they halted to consider the matter and to rest their thirsty ponies. It was slow travelling and every way unpleasant to a pair of young people who had set out that morning with a merry assurance that the great chief, the father of whom they were so proud, had outwitted the Mexicans and was about to outwit the blue-coats and the cowboys.
He, lying in his rabbit-path, was now very nearly ready to declare to himself what was the best thing for a great Mescalero Apache to do next, when he was called upon to witness an extraordinary performance. The bugle-practice had closed many minutes; the last horse had eaten his rations and had been watered. The last cowboy had sprung to the saddle; squads had been counted off; directions had been given by Colonel Evans, and each small party was about to enter the chaparral by a different path.
The spring was deserted, and its flashing ripples, with the white rock around them, could be seen at a distance by any rider coming along one of the straighter avenues. Two who came along saw it, and each uttered a glad, thirsty cry. A sort of despair left them so instantly that they did not pause for thought or consultation. Boy and girl together, they lashed their ponies and dashed recklessly forward. Their shouts had been heard.
"There's Cal!" exclaimed one cowboy.
"He's coming," said another.
A third had his hat off and was just on the point of hurrahing when the deep voice of Colonel Evans, in a distinct though suppressed tone, warned them.
"Silence, all! It isn't his voice. Wait."
They waited, and it was barely a full minute before Kah-go-mish saw Ping and Tah-nu-nu halt their ponies at the spring.
"Ping!" screamed Tah-nu-nu.
"Ugh!" said he. "Cowboy!"
On all sides appeared the mysteriously unexpected horsemen, swiftly closing around them. It was of no use to run or to resist. The chief's daughter and The-boy-whose-ear-pushed-away-a-piece-of-lead were prisoners in the hands of the very men who had come to steal from their father all the good horses he had gathered upon Slater's Branch.