It was the very hour when Mrs. Evans and Vic were talking, at Santa Lucia, about the cavalry and cowboy expedition which had gone in search of the Apaches. Many a long mile to the southward of the old hacienda the sun shone hotly down upon the rugged slope of a spur of a range of mountains. At the bottom of the slope ran a wide trail which had been used by wagons, and was almost like a road. Along its narrow pathway of sand and shale rode a straggling cavalcade of extraordinary-looking horsemen. About half of them carried lances and wore a showy green and yellow uniform. All had firearms in abundance, and most of them had long sabres rattling at their sides. There seemed to be a profusion of silver ornaments, even on men as well as upon bridles and saddles, but there were also a number of badly battered sombreros and ragged serapes. What is a sombrero? It is any sort of very wide-brimmed, low-crowned hat, and can be made to carry much tinsel and feathers. As for a serape, one can be made out of any blanket by cutting a hole in the middle of it, so that it will hang gracefully around the man or woman whose head has been pushed through the hole. It was not easy to say whether the gay officer commanding the gaudy lancers, or the remarkably tattered peon who led the last string of pack-mules, at the rear, was really the most picturesque Mexican of that cavalcade.

On the slope above them, less than three hundred yards from the trail, a great bowlder of gray granite stood out prominently from the bushes and the smaller lumps of rock around it.

On the bowlder, at its very edge, stood the figure of a man who was even more noteworthy than were the officer and the peon. His arms were folded, so that two red stocking-legs spanned his broad chest; his silk hat, with a green-veil streamer, was cocked on one side defiantly; his attitude was that of a man who did not fear all Mexico, and the loudly uttered words he sent down at the horsemen were: "Kah-go-mish is a great chief!"

Whether or not they believed him, and although he had given them no apparent cause for considering him an enemy, horseman after horseman lifted carbine or revolver and blazed away at the Mescalero leader. Bullet after bullet buzzed in among the bushes and rocks above and behind him, but not a muscle of his tall form flinched.

All practised riflemen know that a mark posted as he was is difficult to hit, even at short range and in shadow, and that the difficulty magnifies with distance and a sunny glare.

There stood Kah-go-mish, and while report after report rang out in the narrow valley, and called forth echoes from among the crags, he exhausted all he knew of Spanish and was compelled to help it with his native Apache dialect, and even then seemed unable to express his opinion of the marksmen. He had much to say concerning his own great and good qualities and those of his people, but declared that all the unpleasant reptiles and insects and quadrupeds he could name were serving as Mexicans that afternoon. He shouted to them that they did not even know how to shoot. If they had been Gringos (Yankees) of the lowest order, he said he might be in danger from their bullets, but, as it was, the man they aimed at was safer than any other man within range.

The Mexican caballeros may or may not have been able to understand any part of that hailstorm of hard words, but Kah-go-mish had an audience and was not wasting his eloquence. He and his bowlder seemed to be alone, jutting out from the slope, but that was an optical illusion. That knob of granite stood upon the outer rim of a wide, ragged, bushy ledge, and at no great distance there began a shadowy growth of forest. The broken level behind Kah-go-mish was peopled by scores of braves and squaws and younger people, proving that the two sections of his band had reunited. Dogs ran hither and thither, while ponies and horses could be seen among the trees. One dog in particular did his futile best to climb the bowlder, and then sat down under a furze bush and yelped with all his might at the cavalcade, as if in sympathy with the chief of his band of Apaches.

At the right of the granite bowlder, and several paces from the edge or the ledge, were some huge fragments of red basalt rock. In front of these crouched a group which gazed at Kah-go-mish with unmistakable pride. In the middle sat Wah-wah-o-be, bonnet and all. Against her, on the right, was curled the form of the young lady in the wonderful red dress, and she looked almost pretty as her black eyes flashed with admiration of her father's magnificent heroism and oratory. At the left of Wah-wah-o-be, the boy in the Reservation trousers stood sturdily erect, but nothing could make him handsome or take from his broad, dark face the look of half-anxious dulness which belonged there. His beady eyes glittered, and he showed his white teeth, now and then, but his very smile was dull. He leaned back against the rock, and just then a something came whizzing past his head, and there was a slightly stinging sensation in his left ear. He did not wince, but he lifted his hand quickly to his ear, and there sprang to his lips an involuntary imitation of the sound made by the ragged ounce ball of lead when it struck the crumbling basalt.

"Z-st-ping!" he said, and the sound was caught up by other voices.

"Ping—ping—ping," ran from lip to lip, and some laughed merrily, for all had heard the whiz and thud of the deadly missiles which were coming up from the valley, although they and Wah-wah-o-be had deemed themselves entirely sheltered.

Kah-go-mish had at that moment turned for a glance at his family, and he uttered a loud whoop, as if of pleasure. At the same breath he came down from his rock with a great, staglike bound, and stood among them.

"Wah-wah-o-be, look!" he said. "Ugh!"

He had no need to point, for she was already aware that the ragged edge of the bit of lead had made a deep scratch in her son's ear. She was both very proud and very angry.

"Ping!" she exclaimed, as if the sound had acquired a new meaning.

"Ugh!" said Kah-go-mish. "Ping!"

As for the boy himself, the dulness almost vanished from his face in his exultation at having been so nearly hit, actually grazed, by a rifle-ball. His sister came around to stare at the scratch, and then his own quick eyes caught something.

"Tah-nu-nu!" he said, and pointed at the wide fold of her red calico. It was torn. A Mexican bullet had found its way through the furze bushes, and Tah-nu-nu had been almost as much in peril, the moment she stood erect, as her brother had been.

Wah-wah-o-be's wrath boiled over. The Apaches pay more of respect to their squaws than do some other tribes, and the chief's wife was a woman who was likely to demand all that belonged to her.

Kah-go-mish had stood upon the rock to be fired at by the rancheros for the glory of it, and was almost too proud of so great an exploit to lose his temper at once. He was beginning to say something about Mexican marksmanship when he was interrupted by Wah-wah-o-be. She had feelings of her own, if he had not. She pointed at her son's ear, and again she said "Ping!"

The bullet might have wantonly murdered any member of her family, or any of her neighbors. She made rapid remarks about it, of such a nature that Kah-go-mish felt a change going on in his mind. Other ears had heard, and the voices of braves and squaws seemed to agree with that of Wah-wah-o-be. All had fallen back from the dangerous margin, and it would have looked a little like a council if a squaw had not been the speaker. There was very little red upon the ear of Ping, but it served her as a representative of all the wrongs ever done to the Apaches by the white men, including that of cooping them in upon the Reservation, where she had obtained her bonnet, and where they had all but starved for lack of game.

The blood of Kah-go-mish reached the right heat at last, and his hand arose to his mouth to help out the largest, longest, fiercest war-whoop he knew anything about.

"Kah-go-mish is a great chief!"

He said this as he strode away towards the trees, waving back all the rest with his hands. Warriors and squaws, boys and girls, they at once seemed to arrange themselves for a good look at whatever their great man might be about to do.

He was gone but a few minutes, and returned, leading a mean-looking, undersized, disreputable pony, upon whose head he had placed a miserable, worn-out bridle.

He did not utter a word to Wah-wah-o-be, but upon the ground before her he deposited a handsome rifle, a bow and arrows, and a lance. He took from his belt the revolver and laid it beside the other weapons, and upon them all he placed the green-veil-plumed silk hat and the red stocking-legs. He ostentatiously called attention to the fact that he retained nothing but his heavy bowie-knife. Armed with only that weapon, and mounted upon his worst pony, he, the great chief, the hero, was about to depart upon a war-path against the coyotes, the buzzards, the tarantulas, the red ants, the lost dogs—namely, the Mexicans of Chihuahua, or any other Mexicans. He would make them pay bitterly for having wasted so much ammunition that day.

The announcement of the chief's purpose was received with whoops and yells of approbation. Wah-wah-o-be seemed to overlook any possible peril of losing her husband altogether. She may have been hardened by a long habit of seeing him come home safe.

Kah-go-mish gave some rapid orders to one brave after another, mounted his pony while others were gathering their own, and then he rode straight into the side of the mountain, followed by his whole band—horses, dogs, and all. That is, it would have so appeared to any white man standing at the foot of the granite bowlder, but it was only a good illustration of the magical arts by which the Indian medicine-men make it so difficult for green white men in blue uniforms to catch red runaways. Uniformity of color in quartz and granite, or other ledges, provides for a part of the mystery. Shrubs and trees and distances help, and so, often, does their absence. A great break in the side of that spur of the Sierra was as invisible from the pass as if it had been hidden by snow or midnight. It was a chasm which led in two directions from that point. Kah-go-mish waved his hand authoritatively and wheeled his pony to the left, to the southward, towards Mexico. His warriors and his family, and all other members of the band, dogs included, turned northward, to the right, carrying with them positive assurances as to the place, and very nearly as to the time, when they might again hope to see and admire their leader.

During his absence the command fell to a short, broad-shouldered warrior, who walked dreadfully intoed, and who seemed to stand very much in awe of Wah-wah-o-be. She, on the other hand, was evidently well satisfied with the course which affairs were taking. She had picked up the weapons so heroically laid upon the ground by her husband, and she had helped Tah-nu-nu and Ping to gather the ponies of the family. She had said a great many things while doing so, for one point in her superiority to other squaws was the capacity of her tongue for expressing her ideas.

The whole band had an almost prosperous appearance, very different from that which it had worn just before it began to swarm around Sam Herrick and the drove of horses. Lodge-poles had been cut, now that there were ponies to drag them. Hardly anybody was on foot, except a few braves whose half-trained, spirited horses were likely to require leading over narrow and pokerish mountain-passes.

Kah-go-mish rode on alone in one direction and the band went in the other, and both were shortly buried in the deep, cool gloom of the shadowy chasms.