"It may be—I rather hope so, for we haven't had any luck thus far in locating the beggars. When we sighted you we thought we were in for a fight, but it didn't happen," the captain added, his voice quite rueful.
"I notice you came along all primed for business!" chuckled Yellin' Kid.
"But we were ready for you—in case you had turned out to be those
Mexican imps!" added Rolling Stone.
"Yes, you seemed to have picked out a good spot," complimented the cavalry captain. "We were just talking among ourselves that we were going to have trouble in getting you out, when we saw one of you wave a hat and then we knew it was all right. In a way we were glad, for this fighting is nasty business at best, though we don't pass any of it up when it comes our way," he added with an air of pride in his troop.
"You weren't any gladder to find out there was a mistake than we were," said Dick. "You soldiers looked like a lot of Indians with lances and scalps dangling from them." Indeed the lances of the troopers were decorated with wisps from the tails of horses, and, at a distance, might have resembled grewsome human scalps.
"There are few Indians, now-a-days who use lances," said Captain Marshall. "They went out of date about the time Fenimore Cooper wrote about Leather Stocking. The Indians didn't keep to their bows and arrows, or lances, once they could get guns and powder. I don't know much about the Yaquis, but I fancy they did the same—discarded their lances, if they ever used any, and their bows, for guns."
"Another thing," added Lieutenant Snow, who was next in command to his captain, "scalps were too precious a trophy to dangle from the point of a lance. Some Indians may have tied strands of human hair on their lances, but I doubt if they used scalps. The scalps were hung at the belt of the man who took them, to be afterward displayed in his tepee. But I don't believe the Mexican Indians followed that practice, though of course I'm not certain about it."
"The modern Yaquis are mean enough to do anything," said Rolling Stone. "What the old timers did doesn't matter now. It's what these of today do. And I reckon ye've heard how a party of 'em has taken prisoners some of their friends," and he waved his hand toward the outfit from Diamond X, of which he was not yet a full-fledged member.
"Yes, we heard about the uprising," admitted Captain Marshall. "We had orders to take the trail, and we've been on it since. Well, as long as you are ready, we may as well trot over and see what the scout has to report. I hope he can put us on the real trail."
The bugle sounded, the troopers formed, and with the boy ranchers and their friends falling in the rear, an unofficial part of the company of regulars, the cavalcade set forth again.