Kah-go-mish and all the other members of his band except two had been entirely absorbed in the marching and counter-marching required to make other people lose track of them. Meantime the two exceptions had been threading the blind paths of the chaparral more rapidly and a great deal more anxiously.

Neither of the ponies which carried Ping and Tah-nu-nu was hampered by any saddle, and both were somewhat wild, but they were not wild enough to have an antelope's learning as to the streets and lanes of that bushy wilderness. Their young riders were just as ignorant. After the fight with the cougar, Ping remembered that when Tah-nu-nu sent her last arrow into the side of the great cat she had seemed to him to be about twice her ordinary size. Her bow had twanged at the moment when he had himself felt like a very small boy indeed, about to be stepped upon by the worst claws in the world. She, at that moment, had thought of her brother as a young warrior and a hero. Now, however, they were even, for they both had lost their way; and she spoke of him as a mere boy, while he described her as a little squaw, from whom, of course, any great amount of wisdom was hardly to be expected. Whether they rode fast or slow, up one path or down another, seemed to make little difference. They were in a complete puzzle, and there were a number of square miles of it.

At last an avenue of more than ordinary width seemed to offer a promise that it might lead somewhere in particular, instead of everywhere in general, and Ping remarked: "Ugh! Heap trail," as he rode into it.

"Buffalo trail," added Tah-nu-nu, satirically, and she was right, but it was the best highway they had yet discovered.

On they rode, for a while, making fewer turns and windings, until they came to a problem which halted them. The wide path split into two that were equally wide, and made a good place for a lost Apache boy and girl to argue a knotty question. Tah-nu-nu favored the right-hand road while Ping preferred the left, and neither of them could give a good reason for any choice.

After Ping killed the cougar, the heart of it had been given him for breakfast and the tongue for dinner, but, whatever else he had gained by eating them, he had not acquired that animal's natural-born bush wisdom. He may at some time have eaten an antelope's ear, however, for he now put up his hand as if another bullet had whizzed past him.

"Ugh!" he exclaimed. "Hear pony! Tah-nu-nu, come!"

They wheeled their own ponies behind the nearest thick bushes and dismounted. The newcomer might be a friend, but he was just as likely to be an enemy. Ping got an arrow ready, and felt very much like a young cougar waiting for an opportunity to spring.

They had only a minute to wait, and then another exceedingly puzzled young person drew his rein at the point where the wide path divided. Ping's eyes opened wide and they glittered enviously. Never before had he seen so dashing-looking a young paleface, nor any kind of boy mounted upon such a beauty of a horse. Oh, how the son of Kah-go-mish did long to become the owner of that red mustang.

"Dick," said the boy in the saddle, very much as if he had been talking to another human being, "did you know that you and I had lost our way? How do you suppose we shall ever get out of this scrape? It's a bad one."

Dick neighed discontentedly, and pawed the sand, for he was thirsty, but he made no other answer. He was as ignorant as was his master concerning those roads and of what was at that moment taking place among the bushes.

The Mescalero branch of the great Apache nation, while at war with Mexico, was at peace with the United States, although it was by means of a treaty which had been badly cracked, if not broken, upon both sides. As for The-boy-whose-ear-pushed-away-a-piece-of-lead, however, he felt in all his veins that he was at war with the entire white race, and that he wanted that red mustang.

His arrow was on the string, and he was lifting his bow, when Tah-nu-nu caught him firmly by the arm.

"Ugh!" she whispered. "Kah-go-mish say no kill. No fight blue-coat. No take 'calp. Ping no shoot."

The too eager young warrior struggled a little, but Tah-nu-nu was determined. Then he seemed to assent, and she let go of his arm while they both listened to something more that the white boy said. They could not quite understand the words, but they could read the decision he came to.

"Dick," he remarked, "here goes. We'll take to the right, if it leads us to China."

With the guiding motion of his hand the red mustang sprang forward. Just as he did so, a fiercely driven arrow whizzed by the head of his master. It only missed its mark by a few inches, and they had been gained for Cal by the quick hand of Tah-nu-nu.

"Indians!" was the exclamation that sprang to Cal's lips. "An ambush."

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.

"It's time for us to try something new, Dick," he said, but he said it dolefully, as he turned to the left and pushed down the unknown avenue. It had its curves, like the other, and it was wider here and narrower there, and it led him on for a full hour. He had long since almost forgotten about the whizzing arrow, in his deep anxiety, and he knew that there could not be ambushes everywhere.

At the end of the long hour he and Dick stood stock-still. They were on a slight elevation from which a considerable sweep of the chaparral could be overlooked. It was a dreary, dreary prospect, and it seemed to be interminable. Cal stared wistfully in all directions, but north and south and east and west appeared to be alike without hope. Into that lonely path no other human being was likely to come. Dick and Cal were like flies, caught in the vast web. In spite of the glowing sunshine, all things seemed to be growing very dark indeed, and they even grew darker when his feverish imagination wandered away to Santa Lucia.

"It's a fact, Dick," he said, huskily, "you and I are lost."