"Ha indeed," Francisco grunted. "Are you ready?"
"Ready," said Geronimo.
Each lifted a football-sized boulder from its bed, tilted it on end, and let it go. The rolling boulders gathered stones, gravel, more boulders. A fair-sized landslide, indeed an avalanche, thundered down. A great cloud of dust arose.
When the dust cleared, Geronimo and Francisco again saw the soldiers. They had escaped the avalanche by running frantically to one side or the other, taking their horses with them. But all were mounted now and galloping frantically back in the direction from which they had come.
Geronimo said, "The soldier chief at San Carlos asked me how we fought Mexicans. I told him bullets are too hard to get to waste on them, and that we fought them with rocks. He thought I lied."
Without another word he started up the slope, following the trail of the other three raiders and the cattle.
A week later Chato, Benito, and twenty-five of the twenty-six warriors who had gone raiding in Arizona, rode into Geronimo's camp. Chato dismounted, loosed his horse, and went to sleep beneath a pine. Benito regarded him admiringly.
"That one sleeps only in the saddle while he is on a raid!" he said. "When the rest of us slept, he stood guard!"
"Was it a good raid?" Geronimo inquired.