The Red Mustang

The needs of human beings are very much the same the world over, but they are satisfied in different ways. The tilted wagon from Santa Fé brought to Santa Lucia coffee and sugar of a better quality than the Apaches found in the packs of the Mexican army mules, but it was sugar and coffee after all. The magazines and papers had been full of news and information for Vic and her mother, and the escaped train-guard brought very interesting matter to Colonel Romero. Letters came with the wagon, but not one so interesting as was the epistle which Cal had written upon the cactus-leaf. No story of any sort, in any of the books or pamphlets which Vic turned over so eagerly, was likely to be more absorbingly interesting to her or to any other reader than were to Ping and Tah-nu-nu the tales told by the old Chiricahua under the shadow of the mesquit bushes near the Manitou Water. He told more, that evening. Some of them were about himself and some were about things that he had seen among the blue-coats at the forts where he had been. They were in a good frame of mind for listening, since the sign-language letter brought to them by the messenger of Kah-go-mish. They knew from him that their band was to leave no trail behind it, and that the son of the long chief of the cowboys was as much a prisoner as they were. If they did not give up the idea of trying to make their own escape, they felt more contented, and could joke and laugh about their captivity.

"Ping pale-face by and by," said Tah-nu-nu, almost merrily. "Heap blue-coat chief. Kah-go-mish make Cal big Apache brave."

Her quick ears had caught his name, but Ping more frequently spoke of him as "Heap pony."

Before the arrival of that quiet evening hour, Cal had added somewhat to his rapidly growing list of new experiences. He felt better after writing the cactus-leaf letter, and he ate a fair second breakfast, cooked for him by Wah-wah-o-be. He made her acquaintance very fast, but Kah-go-mish had his hands full of duties belonging to his pack-mule cargo, and he did not come again.

Quite a different sort of fellow did come, for the wrinkled-faced old warrior was ready to burst with curiosity as to how Cal had managed to get out of his forked-stake prison. With Wah-wah-o-be's help he managed to say so, and Cal volunteered to show him. Several other braves went with them to the foot of the giant cypress, and in a minute or so more that Apache was described by all the voices around him as "The-old-man-who-put-a-peg-into-a-gopher-hole." He already had a fine long warrior name of his own, or the new one would have stuck to him for the remainder of his life. As it was, he evidently regarded Cal with more than a little admiration.

"What do now?" he said. "No more get away?"

"More eat, by and by," said Cal. "See red pony, now. Medicine pony."

There was no reason why the prisoner, under a sufficient guard, should not be permitted such a privilege, and the wrinkled-faced brave nodded. He dropped his long Apache names, however, both of them, and used one which Cal discovered had been given him at the Mescalero Reservation.

"Crooked Nose go," he said. "Pull Stick see medicine pony."

The now numerous drove of quadrupeds belonging to the prosperous and wealthy band of Kah-go-mish were no longer picketed. Free of lariats, but attended by watchful red drovers, they had been conducted to a strip of natural prairie at some distance from the rear of the camp where Cal had eaten his breakfast.

They were of all sorts, good, bad and middling, horses, ponies, and mules; and Cal was able to pick out, as he went along, quite a number that had come all the way from the bank of Slater's Branch. He was looking around him for one horse that was worth more than all the rest, in his opinion, when a loud neigh sounded from behind some bushes near him.

Very much to the surprise of Crooked Nose, the handsomest mustang he had ever seen came out with a vigorous bound, a cavort, and a throwing up of heels, and dashed straight towards Pull Stick, as he had several times called Cal Evans.

"Ugh!" he exclaimed. "Heap pony!"

"Hurrah, Dick!" shouted Cal, and he threw his arms around the neck of the red mustang.

One of the dog-soldier keepers of the horses came riding towards them at that moment, however, and Crooked Nose touched Cal on the shoulder.

"Pull Stick come. Pony stay."

He added a string of Apache words that Cal could make nothing of, but that described Dick as being now the property of The-boy-whose-ear-pushed-away-a-piece-of-lead. He conversed for a minute or two with the mounted Apache, and the latter pointed sternly towards the camp. There was no such thing as disputing with a Mescalero policeman, and Dick himself received a sharp blow from the loose end of a lariat when he attempted to follow the only master he recognized as having any right to him.

Cal was glad to find that his four-footed friend was in good condition, after his pretty severe share in the adventures which began in the chaparral. Still, it was an uncomfortable thing to think of, that the red mustang was likely to end his days as an Apache pony instead of as the pet of all the household at Santa Lucia.

The camp was regained, and Cal at once took note of changes. The fires had been kindled the previous evening, in a straggling line along the bank or a small stream of water. Tangled bushes marked the course of the stream, and great trees leaned over it, dropping the swinging ropes of vines from their branches to its very surface. The more distant fires had been entirely hidden, except for the glare they made.

The band had bivouacked that first night, but now there were lodges going up, and Cal knew what that meant.

"They mean to stay here," he said to himself. "I might as well be in jail."

It was nearly so. The neighboring wilderness had been found to be full of game, and the plan of Kah-go-mish called for liberal supplies of fresh meat, in addition to what he had found upon Colonel Romero's pack-mules. He felt sure that any Mexican force hunting after him would look almost anywhere else, and none was likely to come for a long time. He and his band were happy; they were safe; they could have a good time until continued happiness and safety might require another move.

Cal and Crooked Nose were met by a summons to come before the chief, and went to find him waiting their arrival.

"Pull Stick here! Ugh!" said Crooked Nose.

"Kah-go-mish is a great chief!" remarked the Apache commander dignifiedly, but he had more to say. He repeated to Cal his previous counsel against an attempt to escape, but after that he raked out some hot coals from the smouldering camp-fire near him.

"Boy see?" he said, as he pointed at the red warning. "How boy like? Ugh!"

Cal shuddered and nodded, but he could not find a word to say in reply.

"Look!" said the chief again, pointing to the ground a few paces away, and Cal looked.

There lay the forked sticks which he had escaped from that very morning, and the meaning of Kah-go-mish was very plain indeed.

"Boy, son of pale-face chief," he said. "No heap fool. Go. Ugh."

"Pull Stick come," said Crooked Nose, in a not unfriendly manner, and Cal walked away with him, to be more minutely informed that he could do about as he pleased, until further orders, unless he chose to do something like trying to escape, which would make it proper for his excellent Apache friends to stake him out again, and "make heap fire all over Pull Stick."

Chapter XXX.

THE MANITOU WATER

That second afternoon, after the arrival of the tilted wagon at Santa Lucia, was dull enough, in spite of the ample supply of news and literature. All the news from all the world seemed worthless without news from Cal and his father. All the stories ever told were uninteresting until they should come home and tell the story of their expedition after Kah-go-mish and his Apaches. It had been so all day. The projected improvements, in and around the old hacienda, had somehow lost their attraction, and were discussed no more. In fact every time one of them had been referred to it had compelled somebody to mention the absent man or boy who was likely to have an opinion to be consulted concerning it. Vic and her mother went out on horseback in the morning, and they made an uncommonly long ride of it, for they went to Slater's Branch and back, galloping almost all the way home, and putting each other in mind of Cal's dash upon the back of the red mustang to warn them that the Indians were coming.

Duller and duller, yet more unquiet had the day grown after dinner, and now the shadows were growing longer, and they seemed to bring more anxiety with them.

"Mother," said Vic at last, "I've been trying my best not to think of Cal or of father, and I can't."

"It's the best thing we could do," almost sighed Mrs. Evans.

"They may be fighting!" said Vic.

"Most likely they're going into camp somewhere, all tired out," said her mother.

"Oh, I do hope," said Vic, "they are on their way home. I can't read, and I won't."

So all the printed things were put aside, and it may be that some of Vic's thinking made pictures for her a little like the reality that was enacting at Cold Spring and in the Mexican forest. No imagination of hers could have drawn anything quite equal to either of them.

Something almost as well worth making a picture of was taking place a number of long miles farther westward. Away up among the crags and forests of the Sierra, but below the snow-range at that season, there lay all day in the sunshine a very tranquil little lake. All around the lake were the steep sides of mountains, and at no point was there any visible outlet. Streams of various sizes ran into it, and one of them came plunging over the edge of a perpendicular rock, in a foamy, feathery waterfall. There was plenty of room in the valley for the lake to grow larger in, but the trees at its margin seemed to say that this was its customary size. On the northern side the sloping steep went up, up, up, until all its rocks became hidden under a covering of snow.

Just above the snow-line the June sun had been working hard, day after day, melting snow for the lake, until it had undermined a vast icy mass several acres in extent. Nobody could guess how many winters had been required to make that heap of frost so deep and hard, or how many summers had made everything ready for that hot day to finish the work.

Just before sunset a moaning sound came down the mountain and filled the valley. Then something like thunder, or the report or a cannon, echoed among the crags.

The avalanche had broken its bonds! Down it came, slowly at first, then more swiftly, and the tall pines were snapped off and swept away, and great bowlders were caught up and carried with it. Down, down, down it came, and at last, with a great surging plunge, it went head foremost into the lake. Crash! splash! dash! the flying sheets of water reached the tree-tops on the margin. The avalanche found deep water, for it almost disappeared, but it made the lake several feet deeper, and then its own fragments came up from their dive to be floated around and to be dashed against the shore by the waves.

It did not take a great while for the surface of the lake to become calm again, with the snow-cakes and the ice-cakes almost motionless in the fading light. Not any human eye had seen the avalanche fall, or had noted its grandeur or any of its consequences.

All things were peaceful at Cold Spring. Everybody had eaten supper long before sunset, and was glad of feeling sure that only the coming night was to be spent in a spot where nothing more civilized than a jackass rabbit seemed to have any permanent business.

Colonel Evans had said all he had to say about Cal, and he stood near the spring, making vague speculations as to how and when he should get into better communication with Kah-go-mish. Near him, sitting upon a ledge, were Ping and Tah-nu-nu, and the old Chiricahua, who seemed to be telling his young friends something more about the bubbling water, when Captain Moore strolled up to within a few paces.

"Do you see that, colonel?" he said. "I know sign language well enough if I can't understand the words. There's no wonder they're superstitious about Fonda des Arenas."

"Cold Spring?" replied the colonel. "What do they say about it?"

"Ask the scout. He says it's Manitou Water in the old tongue. I can't work the Apache syllables."

Neither could Colonel Evans, when the Chiricahua repeated them. He was even eager to tell more, and what he did tell was curious, if true. Just before the great and noble Chiricahuas and Apaches came to own that country, he said, there had been a hill there, a sort of mountain with forests, and there was no desert there, and no chaparral. The Chiricahuas would have preferred a hill and trees and grass, but the old manitou who had lived there had to go away, and everything sunk down to a level. The trees died and rotted away, and all was dry and desolate, until one terribly hot day when a band of Apaches reached the rocky level, almost dying of thirst. Their ponies were unable to go any farther, and they had given up all hope. They sat around upon the rock, and their ponies lay down. All night long they sat there, and then, just as the sun was rising, they saw something white spring into the air in the middle of the wide rock. A new manitou had arrived, friendly to the Apaches. He brought the Manitou Water, and it had run continually to the present time. Generally it was quiet, but if the manitou heard good news, the water would sometimes jump away up, as it did when it first came.

"Very pretty story," began Captain Moore, but at that moment the air suddenly was filled with excited exclamations.

The old Chiricahua uttered a loud whoop as he sprang to his feet.

"Ugh!" he said. "Heap manitou!"

He added a few rapid sentences in his own tongue, while Ping and Tah-nu-nu darted away to the edge of the chaparral and stood there, clinging to each other as if in terror.

"Colorado!" shouted Sam Herrick. "What on earth's got into Cold Spring?"

The colonel and the captain also retreated rapidly, shivering from the shock of a sudden cold bath, for they both were wet to the skin.

Twenty feet high sprang the water, with a sharp hiss and a report like a pistol-shot. The first leap subsided, but was instantly followed by another and another, each less lofty than the one before it. Then the stream became fairly steady, but with about three times its customary supply, so that quite a rill of water ran away across the quartz, to be absorbed by the thirsty sand and gravel among the bushes.

Neither Ping nor Tah-nu-nu nor the Chiricahuas could be induced to come near the fountain again, but all the white men gathered around it and made guesses as to what had made it jump.

"Something volcanic," said the captain.

"Been an earthquake somewhere, it may be," said the colonel.

All that evening there was more or less discussion of the remarkable performance of Cold Spring, and everybody missed the right guess. It was only a splash caused by the avalanche when it plunged into the mountain reservoir which supplied the chaparral and the sage-hens and the jackass rabbits and the other wild animals there with water. Nothing could well be more simple, and there was no soundness whatever in the grave remark made to Ping and Tah-nu-nu by the old Chiricahua.

"Ugh!" he said. "Manitou Water heap good medicine. Good Apache manitou. Kah-go-mish get away now. Keep all pony."

Chapter XXXI.

PULL STICK AND THE HURRICANE

Ping and Tah-nu-nu had had no good reason for complaining of their captivity. They had been well fed, they had each a magnificent handkerchief and a looking-glass medal, they had heard any number of new stories from the old Chiricahua, and they had seen how high the old manitou could make the spring jump when he heard good news. They were almost conscience-smitten to find how friendly were their feelings towards all those wicked cowboys and blue-coats, but they were sure that they could get over it all and be good Apaches again as soon as they should get out of that camp.

One thought came, every now and then, to trouble Tah-nu-nu. Colonel Evans had said that he meant to take Ping home with him and make a farmer of him, and Tah-nu-nu's mind drew a humiliating picture of The-boy-whose-ear-pushed-away-a-piece-of-lead come down to work in a cornfield with a hoe.

She spoke about it to Ping, and he replied with some awful reminders of stories he had heard of the cruel manner in which little Indian girls were sometimes treated by hardhearted pale-face squaws. She might have felt worse but for a memory she had of a beautiful ribbon given her by a white lady at the Reservation headquarters.

Both of them knew that the cowboys and the blue-coats intended to march away early the next morning, and it added more than a little to their respect for the Apache manitou who managed the Cold Spring water-works. They believed that the great jump of the fountain had produced such an effect upon the pale-faces that their chiefs had determined to give up the pursuit of Kah-go-mish. The old Chiricahua was still detailed to watch the movements of the chief's children, but they were not tied up that night.

Neither had Cal been all day in the camp where he had been staked out the night before. He had seemed to listen so attentively to the stern warnings given him against any attempt at running away, and he had shown such good sense that very morning, that he was allowed to walk around as he pleased. He did so, and he succeeded in putting on an air of easy unconcern, although he knew that his movements were all closely noted by the keenest kind of human eyes. He could hardly for a moment be beyond the range of those of the dog-soldier police, but their watch was blindness itself compared to that of the squaws and the young people.

The boys, of all sizes, avoided coming too near him, but it was not long before he made up his mind that every large tuft of weeds around that camp contained a Mescalero in his teens or under them. Little six-year-olders stepped away from behind trees, or sauntered out of bushes, or seemed to have errands which led them right past him. All of his own faculties were in a state of strained wakefulness, and he did not allow such things to escape him.

"I'll see the whole camp, anyhow," he said to himself, somewhat late in the day, after he had become accustomed to the queer sort of freedom given him. "I won't give them any excuse for piling fire upon me, but I want to know all about this place."

The stream along which the camp lay was hardly more than two yards wide in many places, but it ran slowly and seemed to be deep. There were places clear of bushes, here and there, where it could be seen, and it had a black look, from the density of the shadows which lay upon it. It was good water, pretty cool, and the Apaches had taken some fine fish out of it, but there was something remarkable in the fact that it ran in a straight line.

Cal walked slowly on, glancing at lodge after lodge. Most of them were pretty well peopled, and one that was not so had a guard before it, for it contained the treasures of the Mexican pack-mule train. There was not an Apache in the band wicked enough to have stolen anything out of that storehouse lodge, and the solitary dog-soldier who lounged in front of it was not there as a protection against human thieves. He was to keep out dogs, snakes, and any other kind of "bad medicine" that might attempt an investigation of the good things the loss of which Colonel Romero's cavalry were at that time growling about. He probably had other duties, but none of them related to Pull Stick, and Cal sauntered on, barely catching a glimpse of a pair of Apache boys who were doing the same among the trees on the other side of the brook.

He had never seen finer trees, nor had he ever before noticed precisely such a run of water, for just a little distance beyond the last of the widely separated lodges he came to a point where the stream turned off at right angles.

"It never did that of its own accord," suddenly flashed into the mind of Cal, and he added, aloud: "Some time or other it was dug out!"

"Ugh!" exclaimed a voice behind him. "What Pull Stick see?"

Cal pointed to the water and tried to explain himself, startled as he was a little by finding Crooked Nose so near him.

The deeply wrinkled, forbidding face of the Apache brave put on a look of very dark solemnity as he lifted a hand and pointed at something about a hundred yards beyond the turn in the stream.

"Ugh!" he said. "Pull Stick good eye."

The first thing that caught Cal's attention was an enormous dead tree, whose gaunt, leafless arms reached grimly out above a great mound that it leaned over. He looked again, following the line of the water, and saw something else that was remarkable. The small rill which fed that long, deep, shadowed channel fell into it out of a massive stone tank. The masonry was overgrown with vegetation everywhere except at the place where the rill poured out.

At some unknown day, away back in the past, when not one of those old trees had been more than a sapling, some people had been civilized enough and prosperous enough to construct that granite reservoir.

Cal stared intently, for the shadows were beginning to deepen, and he knew that he would be interfered with if he went too far in his first ramble. The stone tank did not contain all the masonry over which the dead tree was leaning. The mound itself arose four-square.

"It's one of those Mexican pyramids," exclaimed Cal. "I've read about them. Didn't know that any of them were ever found away up here."

He may or may not have been correct about that, but in a moment more he turned to Crooked Stick.

"Sun go down?" he asked.

"Ugh! No. Pull Stick get heap water."

The deepening of the shadows had not been altogether because that notable day of Cal's life had nearly gone. It was rather because black masses of thunderclouds had suddenly arrived, and had hidden all the sky above that part of the ancient Aztec forest.

Swiftly enough came a darkness that walked in among the tree-trunks and covered them so that they could not be seen at twenty feet away.

A vivid gleam of quivering lightning made everything stand out clearly for a second. Then came a deafening roll of thunder, and that was followed by another burst of sound that Cal did not recognize. He did not even know the Apache word for cougar, which sprang to the lips of Crooked Nose. The beast which had uttered the terrified roar, however, came leaping past with tremendous bounds, as if the thunderbolt had fallen near him and he hoped to get away from it. Cal stood still, mainly because no time was given him for doing anything else, but the cougar almost brushed his shoulder as it sprang by him.

"Ugh!" said Crooked Nose. "Pull Stick great brave by and by. Good!"

Flash after flash, almost incessantly, followed the tremulous glare of lightning, and peal on peal followed the thunder, during a full minute, before any rain fell. Then it seemed to Cal as if one awful flash went through everything around him, bringing its rattling volume of deafening thunder with it. He was half-blinded, half-stunned, for a moment.

"That flash must have struck close by," he exclaimed.

So it had, for the next gleam showed him the gigantic trunk of the withered tree splintered through near the earth, its whitened stem, with its drapery of vines, toppling over to come down with a great crash upon the mound above which it so long had stood sentinel.

The next instant all was densely dark, for the rain came down in sheets, and all other sounds except that of the thunder were drowned in the roar of a great wind. Cal Evans had come into that forest to witness a hurricane.

Chapter XXXII.

UNDER A FALLEN TREE

Cal had been all day in a chaparral without water, and he knew by experience how very dry an alkali desert could be, whether under a hot sun or a brilliant moon. He had seen sudden storms before, for he was a ranch-boy, and there are wonders of electricity and rain at times upon the plains. Up to the moment when the hurricane struck the tree-tops, however, he had never fully understood what could be done by wind and water and thunder and lightning, at their very best working strength, working together. No wonder a poor cougar should be in a hurry to get under safe cover if he had any clear idea that all this was coming.