Nobody spoke again. If anyone even coughed, from the cold air, he did so with his mouth pressed against his blanket. Jimmie shivered with the cold and the excitement.
Now here came Archie and Joe and their squad, trotting back from their reconnoitering. Archie reported to Major Brown and Nan-ta-je.
“Yavapai fires,” whispered Micky, sinking beside Jimmie. “Pony herd, too. Four wickyups. No Yavapai. Left wickyups and ponies, little while ago. Maybe go to tell Delt-che.”
That looked bad.
“Huh!” grunted a White Mountain. “We go to surprise Yavapai. If Yavapai know and surprise us, we all get killed, says Nan-ta-je.”
“What ponies?” asked somebody, of Micky.
“Pima and undah (white-man) ponies. Traveled far. Feet worn out.”
In their cavalry capes Captain Taylor and Lieutenant Bourke stole forward, stooping. They had been sent for to consult with Major Brown, Archie MacIntosh, and Nan-ta-je and Chief Big Mouth. Pretty soon they went back. The march was resumed, toward the fires. The column had spread out, ready to defend itself, but the White Mountain scouts kept ahead. Chief Owl Ears’ Pimas were behind with the Captain Burns company.
The fires were still glowing at the Yavapai camp on the top of the mesa, in a hollow where there were grass and water for the stolen ponies. But save for the snorts of the ponies, all was silence. The march had been made cautiously, and now the air had thinned; in the east the sky had lightened. Morning was at hand.
“Yavapai cave near,” whispered Micky. The word had been passed along, somehow. The march was halted again. Teeth chattered.