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."