"Back to camp, Garry. Corporal Peters, take the same post, with two men. There may be more of them."
"All right, captain."
There was a little more talking done, but these seemed to be a somewhat quiet set of men. There were six of them besides the captain. They were all dressed in blue, and wore brass buttons and carried short-barrelled carbines and sabres. A good look at them would have recalled to the mind of Two Arrows all the arguments he had ever heard as to the wisdom of keeping the peace with the pale-faces. When they reached the camp, after "changing the guard" at Garry's river-side post, it was easy to see that their entire force consisted of several times as many men of the same sort. Every man was on his feet, wide awake and waiting for orders. One squad of five stood with each man's hand upon the bridle of a saddled horse, ready to mount, just as the first squad must have been, when it heard the warning report of Garry's carbine. A company of United States cavalry, veteran Indian fighters, following a "hot trail," keeps itself wonderfully ready for action. It is not easy to take such men by surprise. Now, however, at the word of command, all was instantly quiet again. The actual meaning of the alarm was rapidly told from man to man, and several remarked:
"Good for Garry! We'll catch 'em yet."
All who had a right to go to sleep, did so as unconcernedly as if they had been in a hotel. On the whole, it looked as if something else than peace were on its way into the valley where One-eye was keeping watch for the smokers. The last man to lie down was the captain, and one of the wide-awake squad nodded at him and said to another,
"If there was forty alarms 'fore sun-up, old Grover'd be the first man to turn out every time."
"Not much reg'lation 'bout him."
"But there's lots of fight."
"He can get more hard work out of men and hosses, and he can do more himself, and he can sleep less, and say less about it all, than any other captain I ever served under."
That, therefore, was the kind of soldiers from whom the Apaches were wisely trying to get away, and Garry's carbine had destroyed their prospect of learning how very near he and his might be. It looked very much as if two days more of hard riding would bring them into a sort of trap, with the mountains before and the cavalry behind. Still, even then, there would be the pass, if they knew where to find it. There also were One-eye and all of his men and Sile Parks and his party; and the wicked old mule, too, with his command, was in the valley somewhere. Only a few days earlier the entire sweep of forest and "open and mountain-side" had been unoccupied by anything more dangerous or more interesting than wild game and the wild animals that fed on it. It is very curious how suddenly immigrants will sometimes pour into a new country if there is a good trail pointing out the way.