"Leave heap sign," said Kah-go-mish. "Paleface know great chief been here. Not know where gone. Ugh!"
Sign enough was made, for now the band moved away westerly by a path of the chaparral. Broad and plain was the trail left behind and it was all on Mexican sand. It went right along until it reached and crossed another wide path at right angles. Here most of the band turned to the left, under orders, but the rest, a lot of warriors, went on, making false trail as if for a purpose, half a mile farther, to a wide, empty patch of hard gravel. No two of the warriors left that patch together, and the trail died there. Of the band which turned to the left, at the crossing, the squaw part pushed on while some cunning old braves worked like beavers to scratch out every trace that they or theirs had entered that left-hand path at all.
It was all a very artistic piece of Indian dodging, and when it was completed the entire band of Kah-go-mish was encamped in a secluded nook of the chaparral about a mile and a half from the spring. So far as any tracks they had made were concerned, they would have been about as hard to find as the sage-hen, who had now returned to her place under the bush by the spring, and had distinguished company to help her watch it.
A sage-hen crouching low in sand and shadowed by wait-a-bit thorn twigs is pretty well hidden. So is a great Apache chief when he has left his cocked hat and his horse a mile and a half away and is lying at full length, in a rabbit path, a few yards behind the sage-hen.
Kah-go-mish had his own military reasons for hurrying back to play spy, and his face wore an expression of mingled cunning, patience, and self-satisfaction. Something like a crisis had evidently arrived in his affairs, and he was meeting it as became a Mescalero-Apache statesman of genius. He and the sage-hen lay still for a while, but it was not long before there was another arrival at the spring.
No sound escaped the lips of Kah-go-mish, but the expression of his face changed suddenly.
Perhaps the new arrival had been long in convincing himself that he could safely venture to the spring, but he now left his pony at the edge of the quartz level and walked on to the water's edge. He was not a white man. He was one of the Indians who had said "How" to Vic and Mrs. Evans, and the sight of him seemed to arouse all the wolf in Kah-go-mish. The eyes of the Mescalero leader glistened like those of a serpent as he thrust his rifle forward. There was a sharp report and Kah-go-mish bounded from his cover, knife in hand, for the Chiricahua scout lay lifeless upon the rock.
"To-da-te-ca-to-da no more be heap eyes for blue coat," said the ferociously wrathful chieftain, and a moment later, as he again disappeared in the chaparral, he added, bitterly: "Heap sign now. Ugh. Pale-face find him. Bad Indian! Ugh!"