emed to be a chance of massing the party and getting it to some
distance before the Indians could turn their thoughts to blood.

But the manoeuvre was only in part accomplished when battle commenced.
Little Sweeny, finding that his mule was being crowded by an Apache's
horse, uttered some indignant yelps. "Och, ye bloody naygur! Get away wid
yerself. Get over there where ye b'long."

This request not being heeded, he made a clumsy punch with his bayonet and
brought the blood. The warrior uttered a grunt of pain, cast a surprised
angry stare at the shaveling of a Paddy, and thrust with his lance. But he
was probably weak and faint; the weapon merely tore the uniform. Sweeny
instantly fired, and brought down another Apache, quite accidentally.
Then, banging his mule with his heels, he splashed up to Thurstane with
the explanation, "Liftinant, they're the same bloody naygurs. Wan av um
made a poke at me, Liftinant."

"Load your beece!" ordered Sergeant Meyer sternly, "und face the enemy."

By this time there was a fierce confusion of plungings and outcries. Then
came a hiss of arrows, followed instantaneously by the scream of a wounded
man, the report of several muskets, a pinging of balls, more yells of
wounded, and the splash of an Apache in the water. The little streamlet,
lately all crystal and sunshine, was now turbid and bloody. The giant
portals of the canon, although more than a mile distant, sent back echoes
of the musketry. Another battle rendered more horrible the stark, eternal
horror of the desert.

"This way!" Thurstane continued to shout. "Forward, you women; up the hill
with you. Steady, men. Face the enemy. Don't throw away a shot. Steady
with the firing. Steady!"

The hostile parties were already thirty or forty yards apart; and the
emigrants, drawing loosely up the slope, were increasing the distance.
Manga Colorada spurred to the front of his people, shaking his lance and
yelling for a charge. Only half a dozen followed him; his horse fell
almost immediately under a rifle ball; one of the braves picked up the
chief and bore him away; the rest dispersed, prancing and curveting. The
opportunity for mingling with the emigrants and destroying them in a
series of single combats was lost.

Evidently the Apaches, and their mustangs still more, were unfit for
fight. The forty-eight hours of hunger and thirst, and the prodigious
burst of one hundred and twenty miles up and down rugged terraces, had
nearly