d then strike west through
the Musquite Hills. Thur's a crick runs thur, about twenty mile or so
this side the trail. They can git water and grass, and `cacher' thur
till we sends for 'em."

"But why not remain by this spring, where we have both in plenty?"

"Cap'n, jest because some o' the Injun party may take a notion in thur
heads to kum this way themselves. I reckin we had better make blind
tracks before leavin' hyur."

The force of Rube's reasoning was apparent to all, and to none more than
Seguin himself. It was resolved to follow his advice at once. The
vidette party was told off; and the rest of the band, with the atajo,
after blinding the tracks around the spring, struck off in a
north-westerly direction.

They were to travel on to the Mezquite Hills, that lay some ten or
twelve miles to the north-west of the spring. There they were to
"cacher" by a stream well known to several of them, and wait until
warned to join us.

The vidette party, of whom I was one, moved westward across the prairie.

Rube, Garey, El Sol, and his sister, with Sanchez, a _ci-devant_
bull-fighter, and half a dozen others, composed the party. Seguin
himself was our head and guide.

Before leaving the Ojo de Vaca we had stripped the shoes off the horses,
filling the nail-holes with clay, so that their tracks would be taken
for those of wild mustangs. Such were the precautions of men who knew
that their lives might be the forfeit of a single footprint.

As we approached the point where the war-trail intersected the prairie,
we separated and deployed to distances of half a mile each. In this
manner we rode forward to the Pinon mountain, where we came together
again, and turned northward along the foot of the range.

It was sundown when we reached the spring, having ridden all day across
the plain. We descried it, as we approached, close in to the mountain
foot, and marked by a grove of cotton-woods and willows. We did not
take our horses near the water; but, having reached a defile in the
mountain, we rode into it, and "cached" them in a thicket of nut-pine.
In this thicket we spent the night.

With the first light of morning we made a reconnaissance of our cache.

In front of us was a low ridge covered with loose rocks and straggling
trees of the nut-pine. This ridge separated the defile from the plain;
and from its top, screened by a thicket of the pines, we commanded a
view of the water as well as the trail, and t