"Heap bad medicine!" exclaimed one brave, almost despairingly.
"Boy heap gone," said the other.
They looked in all directions, but the last refuge they dreamed of was the camp-fire where Cal was sitting.
Chapter XXVII.
THE POST-BOY THAT GOT AWAY.
Colonel Romero and most of his command spent the greater part of the day after Cal's capture in waiting for the pack-mule train. Some went out after game and did very well, and others went to hunt for signs of the Apaches of Kah-go-mish and did not do well at all. The rest, officers, cavalry, and rancheros, did nothing, and they all seemed to know how.
Right away after breakfast, and before the search for Cal began, the dozen rancheros who no longer had any pack-mules to lead left Cold Spring behind them. Out they marched, under careful directions, for the way given them by Sam Herrick and the Chiricahuas. They certainly marched well, but it was in dejected, disgusted silence. Kah-go-mish, and, after him and his Apaches, Colonel Romero and his horsemen, had trampled the old trail into a very new and plain one, easy to follow. It was well for the peace of mind of the train-guard without any train that it was so, for to be lost was for them to be starved, since they had not so much as a bow and arrows to kill a jackass rabbit. Not one of them now wore a hat, as the braves of Kah-go-mish had imitated their chief, so far as a dozen Mexican sombreros went. There was no danger, however, that the rancheros would get themselves tanned any darker. They pushed on steadily across the desert, and at about the time when the dispirited Americans who searched for Cal in the bushes gave it up and returned to Cold Spring there was a great shout in the camp of Colonel Romero. All the waiting for pack-mules and supplies was over, but the muleteers had arrived, disarmed, hatless, and on foot.
The colonel and every other soul in the camp said as much as they knew how to say concerning the cunning, daring, impudence, and wickedness of all Apaches, and particularly of Kah-go-mish.