“Hano’s father, Honanta, the man whose arrow saved you, John. Can you tell where you saw Hano last?”
“Shore! He was fannin’ out through the Notch on yore pony, Sid. One jump ahead of a posse of greasers. Headed—he seemed to me, for Camino del Diablo,” said Big John, and again his eyes closed.
Honanta faced Sid, his eyes gleaming with triumph. “It is good! My son gave himself to lead the enemy away from our home! He has done well,” he whispered. “Come! We go.”
Out in the fearful sand dunes to the north rode Sid and Honanta with a few of the Apaches. Mounts there were for them all, for Scotty had found their own ponies unmolested and a few of the Mexican horses had been caught. It was a dead and desolate region, with scowling black mountains all about and the sand burying them high up on their flanks. Into this waste Hano had ridden, the flying hoofs of the guerrillas following him as the spurted sand tracks showed. On and on after these tracks Honanta’s party plodded. There was no water here, no vegetation, nothing. By midday they had followed the trail north toward the Camino del Diablo.
Then a cry came from Sid, for far beyond he had spied a lone, low object lying on the stony waste. Empty cartridges lying along the route told that the guerrillas had begun to shoot here. Riding nearer, the object developed into a horse, lying dead and swollen in the sun. Sid gritted his teeth, for it was his own pony.
“Poor Pinto! They must have shot him at long range. Here are Hano’s moccasin prints, though, running.”
Honanta looked down at them in silent musing. Then his eyes swept on ahead. Flying like a deer, Hano had led them on until he had gained the shelter of some distant rocks, the beginning of the black, bare, and waterless Tule Mountains.
The party rode on. Soon the horse tracks showed that the guerrillas had given him up. They could do nothing in the rocks with this Indian, and being on the wrong side of the border evidently had not been at all to their liking. In a sudden turn they had swept off down the Camino del Diablo toward Represa Tanks.
“I take it they’ll all go back to Mexico, Honanta,” said Sid. “They saw nothing of Red Mesa, and I think we’ve seen the last of them.”
Honanta shrugged his shoulders: “My Hano! We must follow on!” he urged.