"What do ye mean to do next, Cap?" asked Bill.
"I told you before. Give our horses a chance to feed, and then push right on. We can afford to use 'em all up now. Three days of hard riding'll carry us out of harm's way."
"And then we can go jest whar we please."
There was a wonderful deal of comfort in that for men who had been "running away" so long as they had, and over so very rough a country.
It was not long before the stern summons of Captain Skinner called them to mount once more, and they were all ready to obey. All their troubles, they thought, were behind them, and they cared very little for those of the country they had gotten into. It was impossible, however, not to think and talk about the Apaches, and to "wonder how the Lipans came out of their attack on that village."
Captain Skinner's comment was: "I don't reckon a great many of 'em came out at all. The chances were against them. Old Two Knives made a mistake for once, and I shouldn't wonder he'd had to pay for it."
Well, so he had, but not so heavily as the Captain imagined. At that very moment he was leading through the homeward pass just about half of his original war party, all that "had come out of the attack on that village."
The village itself was in a high state of fermentation that morning. There was mourning in some of the lodges over braves who had fallen in that brief, sharp battle with the Lipans, but there were only five of these in all, so great had been the advantage of superior numbers in the fight, and of holding the ground of it afterward.
The bitterest disgrace of To-la-go-to-de and his warriors had been their failure to carry off the bodies of their friends who had fallen.
At least twenty of the Apaches had been more or less wounded, and every man of them was as proud of it as a school-boy who has been "promoted." A scar received in battle is a badge of honor to an Indian warrior, and he is apt to make a show of it on every fair opportunity.