He rode on rapidly a little distance, and then he pulled in his pony, adding: "Things are getting pretty bad for us, Dick."
"Ugh!" Ping had said, as Cal disappeared. "Tah-nu-nu make him lose arrow. Lose pony. Heap squaw!"
"Kah-go-mish say, good!" she sharply responded. "Heap mad for kill."
She had saved the life of the young pale-face stranger, and she felt sure of her father's approval. She had heard him give his warriors rigid orders against unnecessary bloodshed. He had specified blue-coats and cowboys with thoughtful care for the future of his band, if not for the treaty, but he had said nothing at all about Chiricahua scouts.
Ping was compelled to yield the point, but it was plain to both of them that if there were more pale-faces to the right, for that one to follow after, their own course must be to the left. Down that path they rode, accordingly, and they were going right and wrong at the same time.
Cal Evans, on the other hand, was going altogether in the wrong path, and was doing it pretty rapidly. It occurred to him that buffaloes marching two abreast must have laid out that bush-bordered lane, but then other lanes as wide ran into it or crossed it. He at last brought Dick down to an easy canter and tried to study the situation carefully. He had heard of experienced plainsmen who had lost themselves in chaparral. They had wandered around aimlessly, for days and days, crossing their own trails again and again. At last they had lost hope and had lain down and died of hunger and thirst at only short distances from friends who were hunting for them.
Cal's heart beat hard as he recalled those terrible stories. The sun seemed to be growing hotter overhead. The wind had almost died out, and the air was like that of a furnace. He was painfully thirsty, and he knew that Dick had had no water since daylight, and then not a full supply, for the expedition had been in the desert since the previous afternoon. They had all travelled rapidly, too, in the hope of reaching Cold Spring early.
"What will father say," thought Cal, "when he finds out that I'm missing? What would mother and Vic say, if they knew? I only rode ahead a little way, and I can't guess how I came to lose track of them all."
No man who gets lost can ever tell exactly how he managed to do it.
Very mocking were the curves of that seeming road to nowhere, and many were the narrower lanes that entered it as if they also wanted to go there. Cal could hardly have guessed how many sultry miles he travelled before he came suddenly upon a wider, sandier path, bordered by taller bushes, that struck straight across the other.