With all of the energy that I would have put into a foot race I urged Coyote along. It was neck and neck between Jim and me. Tom was out of it, a length behind.
"Whoop la!" I yelled, as I drove my spurs into Coyote's flanks. He responded and with a tremendous scamper of speed he beat Piute to the tree by a neck. We put as much energy into it as though there had been a thousand dollars at stake.
"Well run, boys," said the captain, "who won?"
"I did of course," I replied, modestly.
"Nothing but luck," growled Jim, "in another fifty feet I would have beaten you."
Piute's attainments and qualifications were the one subject on which Jim was tender, in all other directions, he was care free and cheerful.
"You may call it luck if it will do your feelings any good," I said, "but Coyote is the horse if you want to get over the ground."
"Or go up in the air," said Tom.
"Well yes," I admitted, "he is kind of high-spirited, but I would much rather have that sort than one after the rocking horse style."
All that day we rode along the edge of the foothills and to the east of us was the great sweep of plains. We kept a sharp lookout for any signs of Indians, for we were now in the land of the Apaches and they are the most remorseless and cruel of all the Indian tribes. Keen-sighted as the eagle, crafty as the coyote, and bloodthirsty as the tiger.