Then at last he rose up slowly and gazed at a certain spot. He waved his arm, beckoning the distant point of blackness to come in, and soon from around a point in the cañon the Yaqui appeared, bearing a heavy Mauser rifle on his arm.
Across his broad breast hung the same familiar cartridge-belt, two more encircled his hips, and he walked with his head held high, like the warrior that he was.
Evidently his flight had led to the place where his arms had been hid, for he wore the regulation knife bayonet at his hip and around his hat was the red ribbon of his people, but Bud was too polite to ask him about his journey. Since his coming the Yaqui had always maintained a certain mystery, and now, though his eyes were big with portent and he smiled at the jests about his gun, he simply waved his hand to the south and east and murmured:
"Muchos revoltosos!"
"Seguro!" answered Bud jokingly. "But have you killed any?"
"Not yet!" returned the Indian, and he did not smile at that.
"I wonder what that Indian is waiting around here for?" remarked Phil in English. "He must have his eye on somebody."
"Yeah, I bet," agreed Bud, regarding his savage friend with a speculative interest. "Most of them Yaqui soldiers was farm-hands in this country before they rounded them up. I reckon he's looking for the man that had him deported.
"Tired, Amigo?" he inquired in Spanish, and Ignacio gravely acknowledged that he was, a little.
"Then drink plenty coffee," went on Hooker. "Eat lots—to-morrow we go to work in the mine."