“And would you have the rest to remain here?”
“Not hyur. Let ’em go north’ard from hyur, and then strike west through the Musquite Hills. Thur’s a crick runs thur, about twenty mile or so this side the trail. They can git water and grass, and ‘cacher’ thur till we sends for ’em.”
“But why not remain by this spring, where we have both in plenty?”
“Cap’n, jest because some o’ the Injun party may take a notion in thur heads to kum this way themselves. I reckin we had better make blind tracks before leavin’ hyur.”
The force of Rube’s reasoning was apparent to all, and to none more than Seguin himself. It was resolved to follow his advice at once. The vidette party was told off; and the rest of the band, with the atajo, after blinding the tracks around the spring, struck off in a north-westerly direction.
They were to travel on to the Mezquite Hills, that lay some ten or twelve miles to the north-west of the spring. There they were to “cacher” by a stream well known to several of them, and wait until warned to join us.
The vidette party, of whom I was one, moved westward across the prairie.
Rube, Garey, El Sol, and his sister, with Sanchez, a ci-devant bull-fighter, and half a dozen others, composed the party. Seguin himself was our head and guide.
Before leaving the Ojo de Vaca we had stripped the shoes off the horses, filling the nail-holes with clay, so that their tracks would be taken for those of wild mustangs. Such were the precautions of men who knew that their lives might be the forfeit of a single footprint.
As we approached the point where the war-trail intersected the prairie, we separated and deployed to distances of half a mile each. In this manner we rode forward to the Pinon mountain, where we came together again, and turned northward along the foot of the range.