They had been plundering the abandoned wagons of their recent victorious foes—that they were aware of; but where they had been so effectually concealed, or how many they numbered were enigmas the shrewdest could not unravel.
Moonlight still hung over the Land of Silence, and the round full orb in the eastern zenith still shone clearly. Still rode the savages on.
Behind, but gaining, came five white men, or about one-fifth of the savages, riding faster and quite as directly toward the plain of the arroyos. The savages, as they rode over the ground, chattered noisily—these men, too, conversed, but gloomily.
“We can not distinguish the Apaches—perhaps we are straying from the trail,” remarked Louis Robidoux.
“Ain’t nuther!” This from the guide, surlily.
“How do you know?” asked Sam, spurring to the guide’s side.
“Bekase we air goin’ ter the eye-dentical place whar they’re goin’.”
“Where is that—to the ravines?”
“Gulches. Dead Man’s Gulches.”
“Why are they named so strangely?”