“Ay de mi! Mi madre y mi padre!” wailed the boy. “Alas! My mother and my father!”
During the recital the company had listened intensely; and now at the close there was a sudden outburst of ejaculations. Some of the men—Baptiste Tabeau, Alexander Godey, Jacob, Sergeant Zindel, and others—were determined to start at once, to the scene of the attack. The lieutenant restrained them.
“Wait,” he cautioned. “I cannot divide the force, boys. We have the camp to look after, to-night. The savages may be coming down the trail. To-morrow we will know better what to do.”
“It’d be dark ’fore we got to the place whar the hosses war left,” reminded Kit, agreeing with the lieutenant. “Injuns’ll travel fast, for a ways, after they take the herd, till they think they airn’t being pursued; then they’ll stop for a feast. We’ll catch ’em jest as soon if we start to-morrow, when they’ve slackened up.”
Thomas Fitzpatrick concurred.
The Mexican man’s name was Andrés Fuentes; the boy’s name was Pablo Hernandez. He was about eleven years old, and with his large black eyes, white teeth, smooth brown skin and regular oval features was a handsome little fellow. The twain were told to dismount, and stay. The lieutenant took them into his own mess, and promised them that on the morrow he would do what he could to avenge their wrongs.
Early in the morning the camp was moving, setting course north to enter the main trail, only a few miles distant. Here were many blackish, rocky, bare ridges, with gullies of gravel and sand between. The gullies formed in the spring the beds of streams; and in places wolves had been smart enough to dig little wells, until two feet down they reached the water which they had smelled!
After twenty miles, Andrés Fuentes pointed ahead.
“The Agua de Tomaso—the Thomas Spring, señors. But I see no horses.”
Pablo began to cry, as his memories revived.