Sometimes he saw parties of them. If they were running away, they were in too much of a hurry to stop. If they were hunting, they were friendly. However, the run-aways did not cross hereabouts. They took another route, further east, along the New Mexico western border.
As a rule, Jimmie rode with a partner; but to-day his partner was ill. Jimmie felt capable of repairing any break by himself, whether the Indians had made it, or whether the limb of a tree had fallen. The line had to be ridden, anyway.
The military road was very quiet. It stretched on, up hill and down, through timber and open parks, with the Gila River on the left, and far on the right, or the south, the dark Pinaleno Mountains, beyond which lay Camp Grant. Pretty soon the telegraph line would head down there. He would ride on until he met another rider, coming from Grant.
The San Carlos reservation was behind, to the northwest, on the other side of the Gila; and away in the north, beyond a high ridge, was the White Mountain reservation, with old Camp Apache that was now Fort Apache.
He was about ten miles out of Camp Thomas, and jogging easily. The only moving things that he had sighted were rabbits and squirrels, and once or twice a deer. But now when from a rise he looked across the Gila, he saw, in the distance to the north, a great cloud of dust.
That froze him. It appeared mighty suspicious. Many people, and horses or cattle, would stir up such a dust. In that case, Indians! This was not white man’s country.
If they were Indians, they were moving very fast, and striking east, like run-aways from San Carlos. Or was it cavalry, riding hard? But if it was cavalry, that meant Indians, too.
Well, he’d soon find out. The Gila, running bank full, was some distance below; the country beyond, approached by the dust, was open and rolling. He had a fine view. So sitting his horse, Jimmie whipped off his field-glasses and leveled them. Ash Flats sprang into the field; and here surged the brown dust, and under it, into the clear of a little swale, streamed a mass of hastily scurrying figures.
Indians, sure!