d, and it would have
been obvious now to the most inexperienced eye that an army had passed
that way. They saw remains of camp fires, now and then the skeleton of a
horse or mule picked clean by buzzards, fragments of worn-out clothing
that had been thrown aside, and once a broken-down wagon. Two or three
times they saw little mounds of earth with rude wooden crosses stuck
upon them, to mark where some of the wounded had died and had been
buried.

They came at last to a bit of woodland growing about a spring that
seemed to gush straight up from the earth. It was really an open grove
with no underbrush, a splendid place for a camp. It was evident that
Cos's force had put it to full use, as the earth nearly everywhere had
been trodden by hundreds of feet, and the charred pieces of wood were
innumerable. The Panther made a long and critical examination of
everything.

"I'm thinkin'," he said, "that Cos stayed here three or four days. All
the signs p'int that way. He was bound by the terms we gave him at San
Antonio to go an' not fight ag'in, but he's shorely takin' his time
about it. Look at these bones, will you? Now, Ned, you promisin' scout
an' skirmisher, tell me what they are."

"Buffalo bones," replied Ned promptly.

"Right you are," replied the Panther, "an' when Cos left San Antonio he
wasn't taking any buffaloes along with him to kill fur meat. They staid
here so long that the hunters had time to go out an' shoot game."

"A long lane's the thief of time," said Obed, "and having a big march
before him, Cos has concluded to walk instead of run."

"'Cause he was expectin' somethin' that would stop him," said the
Panther angrily. "I hate liars an' traitors. Well, we'll soon see."

Their curiosity became so great that they rode at a swift trot on the
great south trail, and not ten miles further they came upon the
unmistakable evidences of another big camp that had lasted long.

"Slower an' slower," muttered the Panther. "They must have met a
messenger. Wa'al, it's fur us to go slow now, too."

But he said aloud:

"Boys, it ain't more'n twenty miles now to the Rio Grande, an' we can
hit it by dark. But I'm thinkin' that we'd better be mighty keerful now
as we go on."

"I suppose it's because Mexican scouts and skirmishers may be watching,"
said Ned.

"Yes, an' 'specially that fellow Urrea. His uncle bein' one of Santa
Anna's leadin' gen'rals, he's likely to have freer rein, an', as we
know, he's clever a