Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/74

 Everything had happened exactly as the squaw had predicted it would, and she showed that she was familiar with the slightest details of the topography, and thus increased our confidence in what we had to expect to such an extent that she was put in the lead, and we followed on closely, obeying all her directions and instructions. Our men refrained from whistling, from talking—almost, I might say, from breathing—because she insisted upon such perfect silence while on the march. There were few instructions given, and these were passed from mouth to mouth in whispers. No one dared strike a match, lest the flash should alarm some of the enemy's pickets. We had no pack-train, and that great source of noise—the shouting of packers to straying mules—was done away with. All our rations were on our own backs, and with the exception of one led mule, loaded with a couple of thousand rounds of extra ammunition, we had absolutely nothing to impede the most rapid march. We walked slowly over the high mountains, and down into deep ravines, passing through a country which seemed well adapted for the home of Indians. There were groves of acorn-bearing oaks, a considerable amount of mescal, Spanish bayonet, some mesquite, and a plenty of grasses whose seeds could be gathered by the squaws in their long, conical baskets, and then ground between two oblong, half-round stones into a meal which would make a pretty good mush.

It was very dark and quite chilly as dawn drew nigh, and every one was shivering with cold and hunger and general nervous excitement. The squaw whispered that we were close upon the site of the "rancheria," which was in a little grassy amphitheatre a short distance in front. Slowly we drew nearer and nearer to the doomed village, and traversed the smooth, open place whereon the young bucks had been playing their great game of "mushka," in which they roll a hoop and then throw lance staves to fall to the ground as the hoop ceases to roll. Very near this was a slippery-faced rock—either slate or basalt, the darkness did not permit a close examination—down which the children had been sliding to the grass, and, just within biscuit-throw, the "jacales" of saplings and branches.

Two of our party crawled up to the village, which preserved an ominous silence. There were no barking dogs, no signs of fire, no wail of babes to testify to the presence of human or animal