"Not a bit of it!" exclaimed Bowie. "These chaps got their cue from Tetzcatl somehow while we were on the way. He never meant we should find out this thing and get home again. They don't know the secret either. All they know is that we're a squad of Gringos, and that we must be chopped up. Most likely they heard of us to-day, and mean to strike us in the morning. We must git! That's all."
"Bully for Red Wolf!" seemed to express the general opinion of the rangers, but the half-rested, half-fed animals were untethered at once.
"If it hadn't been for you they'd ha' corralled us," remarked Cheyne to Red Wolf, but all the response he obtained was "Ugh!"
"We have everything in our favor," said the colonel, "now we've passed 'em. Such a crowd as that won't stir out early. They'll all lie around and jabber and smoke cigarettes and drink pulque and gamble and boast, and then they'll swarm in to find that we've stolen a march on 'em."
For once he was mistaken in his estimate of his enemies. It was in the very dawn of the day, when he and his comrades might have been supposed to be asleep, that the miscellaneous militia from the Mexican camp "swarmed in" to slaughter the too adventurous Gringos. It was a sudden rush, made at a signal, a musket-shot, and it was made with wild shouts of anticipated triumph. It would have been entirely successful but for the fact that Bowie and his men had been pushing northward during four long hours, at a rate which had compelled them to abandon one more of their over-driven horses.
"We've learned one lesson," said the colonel, when at last they halted on the northerly bank of a stream which had proved barely fordable. "When we come again we can make sure that all the Greasers will gather behind us to cut off our retreat."
"That's what I was saying," replied Cheyne. "We mustn't try to go and come by the same road."
"Ugh!" said Red Wolf. "Bring heap Texan. Mexican run."
"There's a good deal in that," laughed Bowie, "but we don't want to have to light at all. We must work it as sly as so many horse-thieves. We shall be carrying too much plunder to want a battle with Bravo's lancers."
They were safe for the present, however, and after only a brief rest they went on again—for life.