"Crooked Nose kill cougar," was the first bit of broken English heard by Cal.
"Ugh!" was the reply. "Pull Stick."
There was a kind of fraud at work. The Apaches believed that Pull Stick had faced the very dangerous animal before him without any help. They had heard the wrathful squall, but knew nothing of the trap. Even when Cal explained it, the glory accorded to him was hardly diminished, for there lay the cougar, claws and all. He had performed a feat precisely equal to that of Ping.
Among the last to come was Kah-go-mish himself, and yet he did not look like himself. The red stocking-legs on his arms were soaking wet, and he wore no hat, while his entire visage had a look of intense dejection. It remained there until he caught a glimpse of the cougar's body, and he nearly repeated the exclamation of Crooked Nose: "Bad medicine gone! Ugh! Heap good!"
Slowly Cal began to understand the meaning of several things which Crooked Nose had told him when he pointed at the tank and the mound. That was a place which, as all Apaches knew, was "bad medicine" for them. They ought not to have camped there or put up lodges, and when the hurricane came it aroused all their superstitious fears. They had been dreadfully frightened; as much so as the poor cougar himself, and they would have cowered in any hole just as he did.
Cal's unexpected feat, therefore, had broken a sort of evil charm of that dangerous locality. He had used a gun, however, to which, as a prisoner, he had no right, and there were serious questions to be considered. He had not undertaken to escape, but he had trespassed upon the "bad-medicine" ground. A storm had come and the bad manitou had thrown trees at him to kill him. Then he had sent a cougar to tear him to pieces. The bad manitou had not been strong enough, and Pull Stick had thus far escaped, but it was all very wonderful.
Kah-go-mish beckoned Cal to follow him, and they all recrossed the little stream and walked on to the lodge of the chief. Several other lodges stood near it, for none of them had been blown down, but all things wore a soaked, miserable appearance in the dull gloom now settling down over the "bad-medicine camp." The squaws were trying to rekindle the deluged fires, but without any success. Wah-wah-o-be, at her own heap of wet ashes in front of the lodge, was ready to give up in despair.
Kah-go-mish was exchanging guttural sentences with a group of gloomy-looking, elderly warriors, when Cal took out his pocket-knife, picked up a piece of pine wood and began to make splinters and shavings of it. He then took from an inner pocket a case of wax-matches, and in half a minute more he handed Wah-wah-o-be a blazing bunch of what to her was comfort.
"Ugh!" said Kah-go-mish to his counsellors. "Pull Stick good medicine. Heap bring fire. Friend."
That was the turning-point, and Cal had but barely escaped a much worse fate than that of Jonah. At that very moment, however, a mounted brave galloped in from the forest and drew rein before the chief with a sharp, warning exclamation that was echoed by every tongue. Even Cal exclaimed aloud: "Mexicans? Cavalry? Rancheros? What next?"