"There is a Quartermaster's train due here in a few weeks—one started before the order transferring us to the Department of the Pacific was issued. It would cost nothing to send the ponies by the wagon-master to Fort Union, and there they could be transferred to another train to Fort Leavenworth."
"Frank, I've a scheme!" exclaimed the younger boy.
"What is it?"
"If the Lieutenant finds the ponies, let's send them to Manuel Perea and Sapoya on the Rio Grande. When they go to the military school they can take our horses and theirs, and we'll join the cavalry."
"That's so," said Frank. "Manuel wrote that if he went to school he should cross the plains with his uncle Miguel Otero, who is a freighter. He could take the whole outfit East for nothing. 'Twouldn't cost much from Kansas City to the school."
"But before you cook a hare you must catch him," said I.
"Yes, and I suppose there is small chance that we shall catch ours," said Frank, despondently.
The two boy sergeants had found life in Arizona scarcely monotonous, for the hostile Apaches made it lively enough, compelling us to build a defensible post, and look well to the protection of our stock. A few years later a large force, occupying many posts, found it difficult to maintain themselves against the Indians, so it cannot seem strange to the reader that our little garrison of a hundred soldiers should find it difficult to do much more than act on the defensive. Close confinement to the reservation chafed the boys. They had been interested in the building of the stockade, and had accompanied the parties engaged in felling the trees in the woods, and watched all the details of construction. When the great gates were hung they asked the privilege of closing them the first night of our occupancy, and when certain duties were assigned them in their capacity of sergeants, the opening and closing of the gates had been placed among them.
A ride to Prescott, two miles distant, was the longest the boys had taken unaccompanied by officers or soldiers. Two weeks before this story opens they had been invited to dine with the Governor of the Territory at the gubernatorial residence, except the Territorial Capitol the most imposing of the log edifices in the town. Governor Goodwin had made their call exceedingly pleasant, and they had remained his guests until tattoo. When the boys took leave of their host and went to the stable for their saddle-horses, they found them missing, with their saddles and bridles.
Next day inquiries in town elicited the information that two notorious scamps, Texas Dick and Juan Brincos, an American and Mexican, were missing, and it was the opinion of civil and military authorities that they had stolen the ponies. The boys took Vic to the Governor's, and showing her the tracks of her equine friends, she followed them several miles on the Skull Valley trail. It was plainly evident that the thieves had gone towards the Rio Colorado.