The stage and the mail riders had been attacked in this very pass. However, nothing alarming happened, to-night. And the probable reason why, they learned the next day.
Dragoon Pass was about half-way between Tucson and Bowie, so that Bowie now lay some fifty miles east. The Chiricahua Mountains and their Apache Pass might be seen, in the eastern horizon.
The Chiricahuas had been so bad during the last two months that the stage road was being little traveled. And when, in the morning, on the way down from the pass a cloud of dust was sighted before, everybody stared, suspicious.
Horsemen! Injuns? No, cavalry! Good! A scouting detachment from Bowie, as like as not; or from Crittenden or Lowell, behind. Lieutenant Almy met them first, and both parties stopped, to talk. Patron Jack, at the head of the pack-train, spread his two arms as signal for “Halt!” and he trotted on, to join.
There was a lengthy confab.
“Wall, wonder what’s up?” drawled Frank Monach. “Reckon I’d better go an’ see.”
“Send the boy, an’ save yore mule,” suggested Blacksmith John Cahill. “He’s fairly itchin’ to sit in.”
So Jimmie somewhat importantly trotted forward, too, up the long line of dozing, switching pack-mules, to bring back news if he heard any.
The party of riders from the east were several officers, and three or four booted, flannel-shirted, whiskered civilians, wearing heavy Colt’s six-shooters and carrying rifles. Yes, and somebody else—a young Mexican, dark enough to be an Apache, clad in broad-brimmed black hat, dirty cotton shirt, old trousers and moccasins.
Jimmie knew him in two looks. Maria Jilda Grijalba! That same Maria who had been a captive in the Cochise camp, and who, Micky Free had said, had escaped after Jimmie had escaped.