"All right. I'll ride out. I reckon their chief'll come to meet me."
The meaning of the Lipans had been plain enough. The sudden firing of the miners upon their superior force had had all the effect of a surprise.
They were furiously angry over their losses, but their wise leader saw that he must give them a breathing-spell. No troops in the world could stand a fire so withering as that which came from the repeating-rifles of the desperadoes. Quite as many ponies as men had gone down, and their morning's plunder had already cost them more than it was worth. Therefore it must not be permitted to cost them any more, if they could help it by threats and talking.
CHAPTER XVIII
There was a good deal of beauty as well as convenience in the spot which the Apache braves had chosen for their camp on the bank of the river.
Many Bears had approved of it when he came in, but he had said nothing about the beauty of it. He had only ordered two or three trusty warriors to go at once and hunt for a ford, so that he could get upon the opposite bank of the river if necessary.
It was some little time before they found one, a mile lower down, and then they and the great chief were astonished by a report brought in to him by Dolores with his supper. Some of the squaws, she said, had taken their children into the river for a bath, right there by the camp, and one of them had found a place where she could wade across and back.
It was afterward found to be a flat ledge of rock, with deep water above and below, but it was none the less a bitter pill for the pride of the warriors.
To think of squaws and children presuming to find, right there under their noses, the very thing they were hunting for up and down so anxiously! That, too, when any man's eyes, or any woman's, could now perceive a good deal of a ripple in the water on the shallow place, such as ought to have made them suspect it at once.