Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/50

 giant cacti had been transfixed by the true aim of an Apache arrow, buried up to the feathers.

For the beauties or eccentricities of nature we had no eyes. All that we cared to know was how long it would take to put us where the train had been ambushed and destroyed. So, on we pushed, taking a very brisk gait, and covering the ground with rapidity.

The sun was going down in a blaze of scarlet and gold behind the Tortolita Range, the Cañon del Oro was yet several miles away, and still no signs of the party of which we were in such anxious search. "They must have been nearer the Cañon del Oro than the Mexican thought," was the general idea, for we had by this time gained the long mesa upon which we had been led to believe we should see the ruins of the wagons.

We were now moving at a fast walk, in line, with carbines at an "advance," and everything ready for a fight to begin on either flank or in front, as the case might be; but there was no enemy in sight. We deployed as skirmishers, so as to cover as much ground as possible, and pick up any dead body that might be lying behind the mesquite or the palo verde which lined the road. A sense of gloom spread over the little command, which had been hoping against hope to find the survivors alive and the savages still at bay. But, though the coyote yelped to the moon, and flocks of quail whirred through the air when raised from their seclusion in the bushes, and funereal crows, perched upon the tops of the pitahayas, croaked dismal salutations, there was no sound of the human voices we longed to hear.

But don't be too sure. Is that a coyote's cry or the wail of a fellow-creature in distress? A coyote, of course. Yes, it is, and no, it isn't. Every one had his own belief, and would tolerate no dissent. "Hel-lup! Hel-lup! My God, hel-lup!" "This way, Mott! Keep the rest of the men back there on the road." In less than ten seconds we had reached a small arroyo, not very deep, running parallel to the road and not twenty yards from it, and there, weak and faint and covered with his own blood, was our poor, unfortunate friend, Kennedy. He was in the full possession of his faculties and able to recognize every one whom he knew and to tell a coherent story. As to the first part of the attack, he concurred with Domingo, but he furnished the additional information that as soon as the Apaches saw that the greater number