Chapter XV.
LOST IN THE CHAPARRAL.
Kah-go-mish and all the other members of his band except two had been entirely absorbed in the marching and counter-marching required to make other people lose track of them. Meantime the two exceptions had been threading the blind paths of the chaparral more rapidly and a great deal more anxiously.
Neither of the ponies which carried Ping and Tah-nu-nu was hampered by any saddle, and both were somewhat wild, but they were not wild enough to have an antelope's learning as to the streets and lanes of that bushy wilderness. Their young riders were just as ignorant. After the fight with the cougar, Ping remembered that when Tah-nu-nu sent her last arrow into the side of the great cat she had seemed to him to be about twice her ordinary size. Her bow had twanged at the moment when he had himself felt like a very small boy indeed, about to be stepped upon by the worst claws in the world. She, at that moment, had thought of her brother as a young warrior and a hero. Now, however, they were even, for they both had lost their way; and she spoke of him as a mere boy, while he described her as a little squaw, from whom, of course, any great amount of wisdom was hardly to be expected. Whether they rode fast or slow, up one path or down another, seemed to make little difference. They were in a complete puzzle, and there were a number of square miles of it.
At last an avenue of more than ordinary width seemed to offer a promise that it might lead somewhere in particular, instead of everywhere in general, and Ping remarked: "Ugh! Heap trail," as he rode into it.
"Buffalo trail," added Tah-nu-nu, satirically, and she was right, but it was the best highway they had yet discovered.
On they rode, for a while, making fewer turns and windings, until they came to a problem which halted them. The wide path split into two that were equally wide, and made a good place for a lost Apache boy and girl to argue a knotty question. Tah-nu-nu favored the right-hand road while Ping preferred the left, and neither of them could give a good reason for any choice.
After Ping killed the cougar, the heart of it had been given him for breakfast and the tongue for dinner, but, whatever else he had gained by eating them, he had not acquired that animal's natural-born bush wisdom. He may at some time have eaten an antelope's ear, however, for he now put up his hand as if another bullet had whizzed past him.
"Ugh!" he exclaimed. "Hear pony! Tah-nu-nu, come!"
They wheeled their own ponies behind the nearest thick bushes and dismounted. The newcomer might be a friend, but he was just as likely to be an enemy. Ping got an arrow ready, and felt very much like a young cougar waiting for an opportunity to spring.