The Red Mustang

by William O. Stoddard

"No," said Colonel Evans, "but you can count upon one thing, they will try to steal away Ping and Tah-nu-nu. Every movement must be watched. Kah-go-mish and his band are far enough away by this time."

The keenest calculations are sometimes at fault. A sharp gallop of three or four hours across the desert might have brought a rider from the chaparral very near the camp of the Apaches. If the palefaces, moreover, knew nothing of the movements or plans of the chief, he did not propose to be equally ignorant of their own. Hardly were they well away from the spring before something began to stir under the bushes behind the great cactus on the western side of the open. Then a human head became visible, and in a minute more a tall Apache warrior was stalking around the spring as if he were trying to find anything which the pale-faces might have left behind them. He was in no manner disposed to talk to himself, and his inspection was soon completed. After that, a half-mile of walking through the chaparral brought him to a bush where one of the stolen Evans horses was tied. He mounted and rode away, and when he left the chaparral he did not take the trail which the band had before followed, but struck off across the desert in a southeasterly direction.

If he had any intention of going back to the "bad-medicine camp-ground," he was making a mistake, because the lodges of Kah-go-mish were no longer there. The Apache scout who came hurrying in, after the hurricane was over and just before sunset the previous evening, had been very near to not getting in at all. He had been all but intercepted by a strong column of Mexican horsemen. The storm had helped him to escape from them, but beyond all doubt he would be followed.

"Kah-go-mish is a great chief!" loudly exclaimed the Mescalero statesman, and he added his own explanation of this new peril. These were not the Mexicans who had lost the pack-mules; not the command of Colonel Romero. They were probably the very force which had made a target of him as he stood so heroically upon the bowlder, and into whose camp he had afterwards so daringly ventured after horses and plunder.

He knew that they were numerous, and he had no thought of fighting them. It was too late and too dark, he said, to begin any march that evening, but every lodge must come down, every pack must be made ready, and the band must move before daylight.

Cal had no idea how narrow had been his own escape from the cruel results of Indian superstition, but he had overheard enough to understand the present flurry and the packing. He sat down, not far from one of the rekindled camp-fires, and watched the proceedings. It made him feel bluer than ever to know that civilized soldiers were so very near. He saw his cougar brought in and skinned, and he ate a piece of the broiled meat cooked for him by Wah-wah-o-be. The moon arose and looked down through the tree-tops, but Cal did not feel like sleeping, although his wet clothing had ceased to steam, and he felt almost dry.

The lodges were all down at last, and everything seemed quiet, when there came to Cal's ears precisely the same boding hoot that had sounded among the cypress branches above him when he was staked out.

"Must be the biggest kind of an owl," he muttered, but instantly he heard just such a sound again very near him.

He turned to look for the second owl, and there he stood, with one hand at his mouth, for this owl was Kah-go-mish, and he was distributing news and orders among his band.

There were rapid movements in all directions after that hooting. Pack-mules were led in. Squaws toiled hard and warriors worked like so many squaws. The horses of Kah-go-mish were led to the spot where his lodge had been, and one of them, bridled but without any saddle, was assigned to Cal with orders to mount at once. He had hardly done so before he heard near him a whinny that he knew.