The Red Mustang

by William O. Stoddard

One antelope held his head up and listened while the rest were drinking. He turned his head and looked around him, and in every direction he could see an extraordinary collection of white or whitening bones, large and small. Perhaps, year after year, many over-thirsty animals had rushed hastily in and drank too much of that snow-water. At all events, they had ended their days there. The antelope, or anybody else, could also have said to himself, "Tomato-cans? Empty sardine-boxes? Bottles? Old wheels? I wonder how many and what kind of white men or Indians have camped around Fonda des Arenas?" If he had been an American antelope, however, he would have said Cold Spring, and not Fountain of the Sands.

The antelopes were divided as to their nationality, and changed their citizenship several times, for, right through the middle of the spring and along the little rill by which it ran across the rock lay the boundary line between the United States and Mexico. Some curious chisel-marks in one place had meanings with reference to the boundary, and so it must have been there; but even the keen eyes of two buzzard eagles, soaring overhead, could not have seen the line itself.

Suddenly the antelope chief gave a bleat and a bound, and in a twinkling he and his little band disappeared in the southern chaparral. Every one of them had fled into Mexico.

Only ears as sensitive as their own could have heard any warning in what seemed the almost painful silence of that solitude, but they were right in running away. Not many minutes elapsed before several of the paths opening towards the spring were occupied by stealthy human forms on foot, peering around as if to make sure that no other human beings had arrived before them. They answered one another with low calls which sounded like suppressed barks of a prairie-wolf, and these were repeated in the chaparral behind them.

Then a tall, broad, dignified man, in a red flannel waist-cloth and a gorgeous cocked hat, and with red stocking-legs on his arms, strode out towards the bubbling fountain with the air of a ruler taking possession.

"Kah-go-mish is a great chief!" he remarked, emphatically. "Cheat pale-face a heap. Ugh!"

If other remarks made by himself and by a dusky throng, now pouring out of the chaparral, could have been interpreted, it would have been understood that a plan of Kah-go-mish for escaping from some pursuit or other had thus far worked well, but that the danger was by no means at an end.

Wah-wah-o-be was one of those who shook their heads about it very wisely. She said very little, and neither Ping nor Tah-nu-nu was with her. If she knew where they were she did not even mention that fact.

There was plenty of room for the whole band of Kah-go-mish, horses and all. They had travelled since the dawn of day, or before, and although it was still quite early they were hungry and thirsty.

There was the spring for thirst, and fires were kindled. These were as quickly put out, after breakfast had been cooked and eaten, and when the sun had dried the waters thrown upon the embers no newcomer could have guessed how long it might be since the last coal died.