Geronimo said, "It has come to my ears that they have been sent from a
far-off place known as Mexico City. The Nan-Tan, the chief, of Mexico
City has at last discovered and is greedy for the gold and silver to be
found here. He has sent his soldiers to protect it. Ha!"
"Ha indeed," Francisco grunted. "Are you ready?"
"Ready," said Geronimo.
Each lifted a football-sized boulder from its bed, tilted it on end, and
let it go. The rolling boulders gathered stones, gravel, more boulders.
A fair-sized landslide, indeed an avalanche, thundered down. A great
cloud of dust arose.
When the dust cleared, Geronimo and Francisco again saw the soldiers.
They had escaped the avalanche by running frantically to one side or
the other, taking their horses with them. But all were mounted now and
galloping frantically back in the direction from which they had come.
[Illustration]
Geronimo said, "The soldier chief at San Carlos asked me how we fought
Mexicans. I told him bullets are too hard to get to waste on them, and
that we fought them with rocks. He thought I lied."
Without another word he started up the slope, following the trail of the
other three raiders and the cattle.
A week later Chato, Benito, and twenty-five of the twenty-six warriors
who had gone raiding in Arizona, rode into Geronimo's camp. Chato
dismounted, loosed his horse, and went to sleep beneath a pine. Benito
regarded him admiringly.
"That one sleeps only in the saddle while he is on a raid!" he said.
"When the rest of us slept, he stood guard!"
"Was it a good raid?" Geronimo inquired.
"A very good raid," Benito said. "For the six days we spent in Arizona,
we were seldom out of the saddle. We struck where we would, and stole
fresh horses where we needed them. In six days we rode four hundred and
fifty miles."